Power blips leave citizens thirsty
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Frequent tripping and fluctuations in power supply has been affecting water supply to hundreds of localities in the city causing severe inconvenience to citizens. In the last one week, the Water Board could not pump water from the Krishna and Manjira for almost 13 hours.
There was a shortage of 6 million gallons of water on Monday to areas served by the Aliabad, Asmangadh, Mir Alam and Chilkalguda reservoirs due to power fluctuations on the Krishna phase-I and phase-II. Citizens are demanding that they be informed through SMSes about any delay or cut in water supply on the lines of the monthly water bill information being sent on mobile phones. Though the main water pumping stations of the Water Board are exempted from power cuts, they do not have dedicated lines. Power supply is disrupted due to unexpected tripping of feeders and other snags in sub-stations.
As much as 180 million gallons of water is supplied daily through Krishna phase-I and II and over 100 MGD from Manjira. There are three levels of pumping stations on which the Water Board depends to pump the water and supply it to citizens. In the first level are the major pumping stations at Mylardevpalli, Kodan-dapur, Godakondla, and Nasarlapalli that pump 180 MGD of water from Krishna Phase-I and II.
“Disruption of power supply even for five minutes at these pumping stations results in a delay of 45 minutes to one hour to start the pumping again. There are 16 high-power motors in each of these pumping stations. Every time power goes and comes back, the motors have to be restarted one by one. This takes time and the supply to residential areas gets delayed by more than two hours for only five to 10 minutes power supply disruption,” an official explained.
Then there are four main pumping stations at Singur which pump 80 mgd water, one each at Peddapur, Rajampet, Kalabgur and Patancheru. “Due to high speed winds, gales and thunderstorm activity last week, there were more power interruptions resulting in the water supply schedule going haywire,” said Water Board chief general manager Vishwesh-waraiah.
Further any power problems at the secondary level pumping stations within the city, at Jubilee Hills, Banjara Hills, Red Hills, Mir Alam Tank, Aliabad, Marredpally and Hussain-sagar pump house among others can further delay water supply to residences.
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