In Maharashtra’s wettest July, 2,458 villages being supplied water tankers
Despite the wettest monsoon that Maharashtra has witnessed in the last two months, reliance on water tankers has only increased year-on-year.
During the wettest July experienced by Maharashtra since record keeping began in 1901 and almost two months since 2024 monsoon arrived in the State, 2,458 villages and hamlets in different regions continue to be dependent on water tankers. Water reservoirs in the Konkan region are an average 80% full, but those at Marathwada or Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar region don’t even have 20% of the stock.
Within a week of monsoon making an entry into Maharashtra, in early June, the average live water stock at the six revenue regions of the State stood at Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar at 9.11%, followed by Pune at 13.06%, Nashik at 22.78%, Konkan at 29.24%, Amravati at 36.90%, and Nagpur at 36.99%. This July, Maharashtra received 529.5 mm of rainfall, which is highest ever.
As of Monday, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar region’s live water storage continues to be the lowest in the State at 20.74%, followed with Nashik region at 56.27%, Amravati region having 60.03%, Nagpur region with 72.54%, Pune region at 80.42% and reservoirs in Konkan area having the highest levels at 88.46%.
When statistics of across Maharashtra is looked at, exactly a year ago, the 2,997 major, medium and minor dams had 58.80% of live water stock as compared to 64.12% as of this August 5.
This data from the Water Resources Department, showed that this day, last year Marathwada or Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar had just over 10% more live water stock. This revenue region has a total of 920 major, medium and minor dams, of which 44 are major, 81 medium and 795 minor. These have second highest live water stock storage capacity after Pune region at 7,260.72 million cubic metres or mcum. Pune region’s live water storage capacity is more than double of Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar region’s at 15,208.74 mcum. The intense rainfall in Pune region has helped to fill the water bodies faster, to the extent the excess water had to be released which resulted in inundation of certain areas of Pune city in the last 10 days.
Despite the wettest monsoon that Maharashtra has witnessed in the last two months, reliance on water tankers has only increased year-on-year. As per Water Supply Department’s data, as of July 29, 2,458 villages and hamlets were supplied with portable water through 1,111 water tankers. Of these 1,111 mobile water supplies, 43 water tankers were by the government and 1,067 by private players.
Of the 1,111 supplies made, majority of the tankers were sent to Marathwada’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Jalna, Hingoli, Nanded and Dharashiv belts at 682 to 533 villages and hamlets. A total of 1,086 rural habitats of Khandesh region’s Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon and Ahmednagar too have been among the affected areas and received 269 water tankers.
A total of 802 rural interiors of western Maharashtra’s Pune, Satara, Sangli and Solapur had to be provided with portable water via 122 water tankers as compared to 37 areas of Buldhana with 38 water tankers.
As compared to 2,458 villages and hamlets this July-end, a year ago, on July 31, 2023, 1,448 villages and hamlets were falling short of portable water and 345 water tankers were diverted to provide them with the essential resource.
Read Comments
- Copy link
- Telegram
READ LATER
Remove
SEE ALL
PRINT
Related Topics
Maharashtra
/
rains
/
Monsoon
/
water supply