Bengaluru facing 500 million litres water shortage: Karnataka Chief Minister
Karnataka, Mar 19: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said Bengaluru currently faces a shortage of 500 million litres of water per day (MLD) against the actual requirement of 2,600 MLDs amid the severe drinking water crisis in the city. He also said that “out of 14,000 borewells in Bengaluru, 6,900 have dried”.
The Chief Minister told reporters on Monday that officials have been directed to meet every day to work out a plan to resolve the crisis, as per a report by the PTI news agency.
Following a meeting with the officials of civic agencies and the Irrigation Department, Siddaramaiah said, “Water bodies have been encroached or died. Bengaluru needs 2,600 MLD of water. Out of this, 1,470 MLD comes from the Cauvery river and 650 MLD from borewells. We have a shortage of about 500 MLD.”
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Pinning hopes on the Cauvery Five project to help resolve the water crisis, he said “it will be able to cater to 110 villages, which were added to the Metropolitan Bengaluru Municipal Corporation in 2006-07”.
“We have enough storage of drinking water in Cauvery and Kabini, which is sufficient to last till June. There is 11.04 TMC water storage in KRS, 9.02 TMC in Kabini,” the PTI news agency quoted the Chief Minister as saying.
He further informed that the state government plans to drill additional borewells across 313 areas, while 1,200 inactive ones will be revived, adding that measures will be implemented to fill up dried lakes.
Siddaramaiah said that officials have also been instructed to use all private water tankers, including the ones from the Karnataka Milk Federation, to provide water to slums, areas that depend on borewells and villages.
He assured that the government did not have a shortage of funds to provide drinking water and a special committee would be set up to ensure that a similar crisis doesn’t happen in the future again.
Amid the water crisis, the Karnataka Water Supply and Sewerage Board has banned the use of drinking water for car washing, gardening, construction, and maintenance in Bengaluru.
As a result of the shortage, people in the city have been forced to buy more water, prompting the district administration to fix rates for 200 private tankers for a period of four months.
About 60 per cent of the state capital’s residents depend on tanker water.
The district administration has established rates for 200 private tankers for a four-month period.
-The India Today
