ADILABAD: The fresh water tank under the Mavala gram panchayat limits that supplies drinking water to a section of Adilabad town is in dire need of improvement with siltation and other factors having taken toll over its 55 years of existence.

The tank system is an engineering marvel of sorts in that water from here is pumped into the filterbeds in the town using gravity all through the five km distance.

Mavala tank originally had a capacity of one tmc water and 1.65 million litres of water is drawn

for drinking purpose every day. This capacity was considered to be surplus as the population at that point of time was pegged at 20,000 only. Increased population has put pressure on the storage which caused it to go dry.

Dearth of rain

Lack of required rainfall has made authorities stop pumping water from the tank. One of the pressing reasons was to save thousands of fish that thrive in the water body.

Against a normal depth of 14 ft, the water level is only 2 ft, that too, only in a considerably reduced area.

Thousands of fish died unable to bear the heat. To add to this, the municipality has stopped pumping in water.

Desiltation work in the tank was taken up in 2002 under the food-for-work programme then.

However, it proved to be grossly inadequate.

The need of the hour is desiltation which may not be proper in this season.

Suggestion

"The height of the weir and bund can be raised so as to increase the storage capacity. This will be helpful even in the supply of drinking water", opined S. Jagan Mohan Rao, Adilabad municipal engineer.

To get the tank completely full one major rainfall is mandatory.

However, this also means that it is emptied fast too.

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