Rs 1,670 crore for Krishna phase-III

The state government has finally

accorded administrative sanction for Rs 1,670 crore for the third phase of the

Krishna Water Diversion Scheme to Hyderabad. It also permitted the Hyderabad

Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWSSB) to obtain financial

assistance of Rs 1,500 crore from the Housing and Urban Development Corporation

Ltd (HUDCO), and the remaining Rs 170 crore would be borne by the state

government.Accordingly, HMWSSB managing director

would raise loan of Rs 1,500 crore from HUDCO at 12 per cent interest. Phase I

and II of the Krishna Drinking Water Supply Project (KDWSP) have been in

operation since 2004 and 2006 respectively. Capacity of the phase-III system

will be identical to those of phase-I and phase-II, 90 mgd. After the

completion of the third phase, Hyderabad will get a gross supply of 270 mgd

from the Krishna river.The gross allocation of water from

Nagarjunasagar for drinking water supply is pegged at 5.5 TMC in three phases,

totaling to 16.5 TMC.The merger of surrounding munipalities

and construction of outer ring road necessitated the third phase of the project

as water demand surged in the city. The current capacity of drinking water

supply in the city from all the sources, Osmansagar, Himayatsagar, Manjira (phase

1 and 2), Singur (phase 3 and 4) and Krishna (phase-1 and 2), is 340 mgd.Based on the source

dependability, the available net quantity of water will be about 271.50 mgd only.In 2011, water demand was about

459 mgd and thereby a deficit of 187.50 mgd. As the deficit continued this

year, the gap between demand for drinking water and its availability from the existing

sources also grew wider.The dependency on the Osmansagar

and Himayatsagar lakes went down to critical levels in view of the 27 per cent

deficit in rainfall in 2010-11. There was also a need for supplying water to surrounding

areas for various industrial and commercial projects in both the government and

private sectors.Considering all the factors, the

managing director of HMWSSB had submitted a detailed report on KDWP phase-III.

The government, in its orders on Friday, also directed the HMWSSB managing

director to propose the balance head works project component to Japan

International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for financial assistance separately to

ensure stabilized supply from the source for all the Krishna three phases. The

Krishna third phase water supply will be taken up simultaneously with the

Godavari first phase scheme.