Anantapur district witnessed the steepest rise in the groundwater table of 10.78 meters during the South West Monsoon, with the current (as of November 1) average water availability remaining at 12.28 meters below ground from 23.06 meters as of May 1. The groundwater level last year as of October 31, 2019, was 19.44 meters and 25.96 meters on May 1, 2019.
This is the first time ever in the last 20 years that the groundwater has come up to this level, all thanks to incessant rains which were recorded at 47.6% excess as of October 31. Against a normal of 461 mm, the district received 680.5 mm from May 1 realising 459.67 tmcft of water of which 40% evaporated, another 40% was lost as runoff, 8% retained as soil mixture, and only 12% got into groundwater table as recharge.
According to the Groundwater Deputy Director K. Tippeswamy, water was available at more than 15 meters of depth in only 18 out of 63 mandals in Anantapur . The exploitation of groundwater is, however, very high and 33 out of 63 mandals are categorised as Groundwater Stress areas falling in the - Over Exploited bracket (21 mandals). The others fall under categories of Critical (5) Semi-Critical (7). Only 30 mandals are in the safe category.
The last major spike in the groundwater level of 10 meters was witnessed in the year 2002 and 9.71 meters in the month of October, 2011. The overexploitation can be gauged from the fact that the water table had been falling continuously from October 2010 to September 2018 and that was the sharpest fall of 27 meters with only minor insignificant recoveries, he added.
