Monsoon not over yet, Maharashtra's Latur already faces water shortage

AURANGABAD: The monsoon is at its fag end but Latur is staring at a water crisis a lot worse than after the poor rains in 2015. To mitigate the acute drought conditions felt in the summer of 2016, the 'Jaldoot Express' had rolled into Latur a whopping 111 times from April 12 to August 9 to bring water from the Krishna river downstream of the Warna dam.
The train brought in as much as 2.79 crore litre water to the district and also national and international attention.While citizens had welcomed the train, the district administration was left embarrassed at its failure to take advance measures to ensure a decent stock of water till the next monsoon.
The storage in Manjra dam was 4.97 million cubic metres (mcum) on October 3, 2015 while it is down to just 3.9 mcum now, which is 24% less than the live storage.
However, the administration is a lot more proactive in handling the situation this year and hopes to keep the water train at bay. First, it put curbs on the use of water on Ganesh immersion day, getting people to donate their idols instead. The idols were being offered for free to manufacturers to be refurbished and put up for sale next year.
Latur doesn’t want water train chugging
Now, after also acquiring wells within the city limits, the administration has stopped water supply to local industries. While the latter measure was proposed a month ago, industry captains had sought relief for a few weeks more hoping for the revival of the monsoon, which did not happen.
Latur district is showing a 32% rainfall deficiency, having got barely 505mm rainfall from June 1 till Thursday. The tehsil limits of Latur, including the city area, have got just 351mm rainfall over the same period. District collector G Shrikant said the administration and industry stakeholders held a meeting a month ago. “The industries then demanded that the decision to stop water supply be postponed till October 1 against the earlier plan of September 1. But now, since the Manjara dam and other reserves have very low storage, the water supply to MIDC has been stopped since Tuesday,” he said. The stoppage of water to companies in the MIDC comes as a double whammy to them as they are already troubled by the industrial slowdown, particularly in the pulses and cement units. The requirement of the industrial zones in Latur is around 3 million litres water per day, an official said.
Chandulal Baldawa, president of the Latur District Udyog Samuh, a local body of industries, said the stoppage of water supply will impact nearly 500 companies operating in two industrial zones here. Residential areas in Latur are also facing water shortage and the administration is planning to introduce tanker water supply from next month.
The administration has already taken into possession five major wells from the municipal limits of Latur on a permanent basis. (With inputs from agencies)