Piped drinking water supply to each and every habitation in Anantapur district will be a reality in the next three years with the Rural Water Supply Department readying a ₹4,000-crore detailed project report (DPR) that has been requisitioned by the State government before this week-end.
The department supplies drinking water to more than 350 villages and habitations through tankers in nine mandals, mostly in Penukonda water division. a majority of these mandals do not have storage facilities or tanks, which could be fed from existing canal networks and groundwater is not available. Compared to last summer, the current season has seen lesser demand, partially due to the lockdown.
Rural Water Supply Superintendent Engineer Hareram Naik told The Hindu on Tuesday that the DPR was sent to the government which asked for some fine-tuning taking into the decadal population increase projections up to 2050, which will entail increasing the size of main pipelines to be used for water supply to each and every household in 3,312 villages in the district.
Huge requirement
At a time when people’s representatives are fighting over their share of irrigation water, the Rural Drinking Water Grid Project will need a net allocation of 9.42 tmcft from both Tungabhadra’s High Level Canal and River Krishna’s Handri Neeva Sujala Sravanthi (HNSS) networks put together.
“Taking into account transmission losses, about 13 to 14 tmcft will be essential to feed every high-level tank with surface water. At present, the project has 4.52 tmcft water allocation at the time of its launch in the earlier version (Jaladhara) two years ago,” he said. All the existing schemes would be merged into this grid to meet the demand.
The department supplies 18 tmcft to the Tadipatri Municipality and surrounding villages,” Mr. Naik said.
How and when does the government implement the project needs to be seen as it entails huge investments. With the implementation of the Rural Water Grid, the current level of 43 litres per capita per day (LPCD) would go up to 100 LPCD in the rural areas.
