DETAILED REPORT ON TELANGANA WATER GRID IN WARANGAL DISTRICT

INTRODUCTION FOR TELANGANA WATER GRID

The Telangana State chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandra Shekhar Rao aimed to provide a prestigious project, which was named as “Drinking water Grid Project”. The water grid Project aimed at supplying drinking water to all households in the state and it has been named as Telangana Drinking Water Project. For executing the project, the state government has already decided to set up Telangana Drinking Water Supply Corporation Limited. The Telangana drinking water project will supply drinking water to gram panchayats, urban municipalities and also to industries by linking up a number of water resources on Godavari and Krishna basins. This project uses 160TMC of water from where it uses 80TMC from Godavari and 80TMC from Krishna Rivers and reservoirs. The estimation to complete the drinking water grid project 4 years. Though the project has been designed for supply of drinking water for 15 years, the system and equipment should cater to the need of the people for 30 years. 

The engineers planned pipeline would have 5227 kms of main trunk 45,089 kms of secondary networks and 75,000 kms of distributor networks. Move over 10 per cent of water from all existing and new irrigation projects will be allocated for the water grid and another 10 per cent for industries. The main use of the project is to provide a health and safety purified water to entire Telangana state, and this was the permanent solution to get purified drinking water. 

The Telangana government is all set to use the latest technology for the proposed Water Grid program. For a detailed survey of the Water Grid, the government will utilize light detection and ranging (LIDER) technology. Lightweight flights will be used for aerial survey. The technology used for the aerial survey will be photo geo-metric. So that the route mapping could be done speedily and also 3D pipeline mapping and geographical information system data base could be created. The government will also use hydraulic modeling software for determining the size of the water pipelines, pumping capacity and height of water pumping.  Besides this, software like surge analysis and smart flow would be used to resolve any problems in distribution of water. Water pressure could be maintained in the pipelines with these two software’s, Panchayat Raj Minister KT Rama Rao said on Tuesday. The entire Water Grid project works could be monitored by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao from his office in Secretariat through System Control and Data Access (SCDA) technology.

According to Rama Rao, Chief Minister Rao is taking extra care to take up and complete Water Grid program and the works would be given only to firms having international standards. Turnkey system would be followed in executing the Water Grid program. In this, the contracting companies would take all the responsibility right from work execution to maintenance of the project. A decision on turnkey system would be taken by the State government very soon, the CMO said. Water Grid would be a “Smart Water Grid” in all aspects, the Minister stated.

The Chief Minister will conduct a meeting in Siddipet on Wednesday with officials and Ministers to explain his success in Manair water scheme.

OBJECTIVES OF WATER GRID

Water is life! International community has declared clean drinking water as a human right long back. Yet, lack of drinking water is a common sight in our state and country.

Even though two perennial rivers flow across the state, the tragedy is, most of Telangana state does not have access to clean drinking water. To change this situation, the Telangana government, under the able leadership of CM Sri K Chandrashekar Rao, has designed the Telangana Water Grid - a mammoth project proposed with perennial rivers namely Godavari and Krishna intended to provide a sustainable and permanent solution to the drinking water woes. 

The objective of Telangana Water Grid is to provide 100 liters of clean drinking water per person in rural households and 150 liters per person in urban households. This project aims to provide water to about 25000 rural habitations and 67 urban habitations.

 The water grid Project aimed at supplying drinking water to all households in the state. This project uses 160TMC of water from where it uses 80TMC from Godavari and 80TMC from Krishna Rivers. Besides this water also will be provided to the industries through grid all over the state. 10 percent of water from all existing and new irrigation projects will be allocated for the grid and another 10 percent for industry

STATUS OF GROUND WATER IN TELANGANA

Groundwater is important in many areas of the state because it is more reliably available in specific quantity than surface water supplies. Groundwater, until recently, has been viewed as a sustainable resource for irrigation and accounts for nearly 50 per cent of the net irrigated area in the state. At present groundwater meets 85 per cent of domestic needs in rural areas and perhaps 30 per cent of urban demand and 50 per cent of industrial demands. 

However, increase in demand and lack of well-defined property rights, accessibility to institutional financing for development of agro wells and provision of subsidized electricity for pumping groundwater for irrigation have led to overdevelopment in semi-arid parts of the state.

 As a result, availability of groundwater is threatened by depletion and by deterioration in quality due to saline intrusion in the coastal region and fluoride contamination in semi-arid areas. Water quality in per urban areas is a major problem due to contamination from waste water and industrial effluents.

 As a consequence, economic growth in rural areas and health of rural and urban communities are at stake. In view of the important role of the groundwater in economic development, socio-ecological status of groundwater in the state is presented below along with an overview of initiatives undertaken by the Government for sustaining the precious groundwater resource.

GROUND WATER SCENARIO OF TELANGANA

HYDROGEOLOGY

Telangana is characterized by various geological formations ranging in age from Archaean to Recent.  Nearly 80 percent of the State is underlain by hard rock formations consisting of granites, gneisses, metamorphics and intrusives (Archaeans), Precambrian quartzites, shales and limestones, Mesozoic Deccan Trap basalts etc., while the remaining area is underlain by Gondwana sedimentaries and Sub Recent-Recent alluvium. 

The occurrence and movement of ground water in hard rocks is chiefly controlled by thickness of weathering and structural features like fractures and solution cavities. In general, the depth of weathering varies from 5 to 20 m and occassionally upto 40 m.  

Ground water is mostly developed by means of shallow-deep bore wells ranging in depth down to 100 m, occasionally even beyond 100 m with discharges generally ranging from 2-5 lps. The semi-consolidated formations of Gondwanas comprising sandstones, shales, siltstones, conglomerates form thick and multi aquifer systems under confining conditions. The aquifers are often prolific with discharges varying upto as high as 48 lps.

STATUS OF GROUND WATER IN WARANGAL

At present water is being supplied at an average rate of 40LPCD for rural areas and 100 LPCD for urban areas. The water grid system is proposed to enhance the water supply at a rate of 100 LPCD in rural, 135LPCD in Municipal/Nagarpanchayat areas and 150 LPCD in Corporations.