Tirupati stares at perhaps its worst water crisis ever

TIRUPATI: The temple city of Tirupati is facing perhaps its worst-ever water crisis. The water levels in its main supply sources — the Kalyani dam and the Kailasagiri reservoir (Telugu ganga) — have both hit almost dead storage levels already due to insufficient rainfall.
Speaking to TOI, Tirupati municipal commissioner P S Girisha expressed serious concern over the grim scenario on the water front and pointed out that the city could run dry in less than a month if the reservoirs do not receive fresh inflows immediately.
Tirupati is home to a population of about 4 lakh people. Apart from that, about 50,000 devotees visit the city daily. The floating population goes past one lakh devotees a day during weekends and festive occasions.
Municipal Corporation of Tirupati (TMC) has been depending on the Kalyani dam and the Kailasagiri reservoir (Telugu ganga) to meet its drinking water needs. According to Girisha, the corporation draws 45 million litres of water every day.
As the water levels in Kalyani dam have already hit dead storage levels, the corporation is now depending on the Kailasagiri reservoir to meet its water needs. However, if water is drawn from the Kailasagiri reservoir at the rate of 45 million litres per day, the reservoir will reach dead storage level within 29 days.
Though the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) and the TMC have an arrangement to share the Kalyani dam waters in 1:3 ratio — 1/3rd to TTD and 2/3rd to TMC — the present net water storage in Kalyani dam has plummeted to 3.80 Mcft which is way below the dead storage level of the dam (34 Mcft).
Besides these two major water bodies, the municipal corporation is heavily dependent on power and hand borewells to draw an additional 1.75 million litres of water per day. Out of the 470 power borewells, only 416 are in working condition, while out of the 312 hand borewells, only 230 are functional.
In addition to the borewells, the TMC supplies 0.595 MLD water to households through 14 municipal corporation-owned water tankers and about 0.296 MLD water through three private water tankers daily. Though these are all mere stop-gap arrangements, Tirupati municipal corporation officials are having sleepless nights as with the present withdrawal rate of water, Kailasagiri reservoir will be exhausted by mid-August.
The Tirupati municipal commissioner has written to the state government, seeking release of additional water from Srisailam and also additional pumping from the Gudur off-take point. The government response is still awaited even as the temple city is set to run out of water in less than a month from now.
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