Hyderabad’s posh areas to be solely dependent on water tankers?

HYDERABAD: With groundwater levels in the city depleting alarmingly, very soon residents of posh areas would be forced to depend solely on tankers to meet their daily water requirements.
Experts monitoring water levels in the city say that rising dependence on water tankers in areas such as Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills, Somajiguda and Ameerpet, is a sign of fast depleting groundwater levels.Water board records show that tankers made 5,150 trips in these areas within a span of six days between April 13 and April 19.
Water tankers are also in high demand in the KPHB area, where officials had deployed close to 3,500 trips during the same period. Close on KPHB’s heels are Uppal and Sainikpuri, where the demand was around 1,500 and 1,300. Officials said that compared to the previous year’s demand, the Water Board has already witnessed a 20% rise in demand for water tankers this summer.
“Heavy extraction of groundwater via borewells coupled with haphazard rainfall patterns has led to rising dependence on water tankers especially in the city,” Datta Shivane, former director of Central Ground Water Board (CGWB), told TOI. According to the groundwater department, water levels on an average have gone down to 17.5 metres from 20 metres in the city, compared to 14-15 metres during the same time last year.
Shivane also pointed out that areas where tankers are in high demand are those where apartments and commercial complexes have mushroomed. “In case of urban areas like Hyderabad, digging is quite rampant leaving each man for himself,” said Dr Shakeel Ahmed, chief scientist of National Geophysical Research Institute.
Similarly, groundwater expert K Krishna Kumar notes that in Banjara Hills and adjoining areas, the depth of drilling has reached an astounding 2,000 feet. To make it worse, the recent heavy but isolated rainfall over the last week has done little to replenish groundwater levels.
“Even the heavy rainfall the city witnessed last week was of no use, as roughly 95% of the surface water did not percolate to the aquifers due to increasing concretisation in these areas. The shortfall of ground water can be extensively witnessed in places where there is a dearth of open spaces,” said Shivane, adding that it is not the intensity of rains that matter, but frequency that plays a pivotal role in this case.