BANGALORE: An acute water crisis looms over Bangalore city. For, not a drop of water will flow out of the Krishnarajasagar, the city’s major source of water, towards Bangalore as the water level stood one feet below the dead storage level of 65 feet on Tuesday.
Confirming this, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) said as on Tuesday it was receiving 110 MLD of water. BWSSB officials explained this was the water that had been released from the KRS two days back. They are unclear the same amount of water will reach the city on Tuesday.
“The situation is grim and we are in constant touch with the Cauvery Neeravari Nigam to release enough water to KRS dam and further to our charging lines. We have also requested the irrigation department to compensate us with whatever amount,” said T Venkataraju, engineer-in-chief, BWSSB.
Though the crisis has been on the horizon for some time, the BWSSB has no contingency plan to mitigate the acute water scarcity staring in the face of Bangaloreans.
“If you have a morsel, you can share it among your family members but if you have no food at all, how can you share anything? Our situation has become something like this. How can we have any contingency plans when we are dependent on the Nigam which is more powerful in terms of allocation of water from the Cauvery river,” he told TOI.
The crisis, in fact, is already on the doorsteps of Mysore city. The pumping station at Hongahalli remained switched off till Tuesday. The Hongahalli pumping station, which draws water for Mysore, cannot draw water from the KRS, as the storage level remained as low as 39 inches, Venkatraju revealed. He said only further release of water from Hemavathy can get this pumping station resume.
The BWSSB is pinning its hopes on the fact that its pumping station at T K Halli can draw KRS water from levels lower than Hongahalli station.
The irrigation department had released 2 tmcft water from upstream Hemavathy river into KRS for two days. After that the release of water has stopped.
The only source of water for Bangalore city other than the Cauvery river, the Tippagondanahalli (TG Halli) reservoir too is in no state to come to the city’s rescue. Though moderate pre-monsoon showers are pushing up water level in Tippagondanahalli (TG Halli) dam up to 11 feet, due to rapid evaporation water level is receding to five feet, making any pumping of water impossible.
BWSSB stopped drawing water from TG since November 2012.
