Water security for Indore city - ImagineIndore.org

water tankers are plied to sell water to needy households and to multistoried buildingscreating a large water market often promoted by vested interests. Another constraint oftenwitnessed by the water supply authority is related to failure of Narmada Water supply dueto major repairs /breakdown of pumps and pipeline. The area served by the Narmada lineremains without water often for long period of repairs.The capacity of reservoirs of Yeshwant Sagar & Bilawali have been reduced by at least25% due to silting i.e. from 19.963 MCM to 14.65 MCM for Yeshwant Sagar and 4.25MCM to 3.24 MCM for Bilawali. The rim area of reservoirs have been encroached by thefarmers where they also resort to direct pumping thereby further reducing the wateravailability from these reservoirs. Particularly in Bilawali tank, the watercourse carryingthe drainage of catchments known as Nahar Bhandara has been obstructed by urbanstructures.Narmada Water supply has one more constraint; originally, the intake well was located ata lower level in the river bed. Under phase III of Narmada Project . A new intake wellwas located at higher level considering that the Minimum Draw Down level ofMaheshwar hydel project would be 162.2 m. Since the Maheshwar dam has not yet beencompleted, some innovative method of direct pumping water from river to the new intakewell has been devised. The non-completion of project will be a bottleneck in fullutilization of capacity of Narmada Project phase III. It is estimated that instead ofadditional 360 MLD, 90 MLD would only be available, thus, temporarily enhancing thetotal availability of water from Narmada Project to 230 MLD from existing 140 MLD.There is uncertainty on the completion date of Maheshwar Project due to pendingproblem of R&R.15