Summer heat is palpable with the mercury touching 38 degrees Celsius in Anantapur, but after half a decade, the district is in a comfortable position as there is no demand from any place for the supply of water through tankers, in contrast to 129 tankers that were quenching thirst by World Water Day last year in as many villages.
In 2019, 1,334 of the 3,324 villages in the district did not have any source of filtered or treated water, and the Rural Water Supply Department used to supply drinking water to 466 villages through tankers. It did not come down last year too, with the government spending ₹25 crore for transportation of water in 2020. The amount spent was close to ₹16 crore in 2019.
Thanks to good gains in last year’s monsoon, 2,016 villages have some source or other created by the RWS and the remaining do not need any external supply this year as of now.
RWS Superintendent Engineer D. Venkata Ramana estimates the need for supply through tankers might not arise till the last week of April. For a rural population of 29 lakh, the RWS has above 200 MLD water filtration capacity, of which 175 MLD is functional and the remaining are under maintenance to be ready by the time summer peaks. “We are currently supplying about 55 litres per day per capita in rural areas,” Mr. Ramana said.
District officials are joyous about the surface water storage and groundwater position as all major/medium reservoirs and summer storage tanks had brimmed during the rainy season.As of March 20, 95% of Gandikota Reservoir (current availability 25.7 tmcft), 37% of Penna Ahobilam Balancing Reservoir (4.13 tmcft), 96% of Chitravathi Balancing Reservoir (9.65 tmcft), 49% of Mid Pennar (2.58 tmcft), 78% of Cherlopalli (1.26 tmcft), 57% of Chagallu (1.03 tmcft) and 79% of Marala Reservoir (0.48 tmcft) was available.
Kurnool Rural Water Supply Superintendent Engineer Ch. Vidyasagar said while 222 habitations were supplied water through tankers in Kurnool district in 2019 spending ₹20 crore, it came down to ₹2.5 crore last year thanks to good rains. Only 23 habitations in Adoni and Nandyal Mandals had to be supplied water compared to 10,000 trips a day from March 27 to August 5 the previous year.
This year, there is no demand at all as of now, but the RWS Junior Engineer Prem Kumar tells The Hindu that they were prepared with an action plan for supplying to 85 habitations by June this year and had got sanction for ₹3.34 crore.
