HYDERABAD: Hyderabad is not just draining its future from the ground. It is also polluting what remains. The city’s groundwater extraction has reached 96% of its annual availability, according to the latest assessment by the Telangana Groundwater Department, leaving Hyderabad closer to exhausting its renewable groundwater reserves than any other district in the state.
The figure places Hyderabad in the “critical” category of groundwater stress, just short of the “over-exploited” classification, where annual extraction exceeds annual recharge. In effect, the city is consuming almost every drop of groundwater that nature replenishes each year.
The warning signs extend beyond Hyderabad’s municipal limits. Across the metropolitan region, 26 mandals and tahsils in Hyderabad, Rangareddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri districts have already been classified as critical or over-exploited, indicating that pressure on groundwater reserves is spreading across the urban agglomeration.
What makes the situation particularly alarming is that this is not happening during a drought.
During the 2021–22 water year, Telangana received 1,181 mm of rainfall against a normal annual average of 906 mm. Groundwater levels rose in 98% of the state’s observation wells between the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon periods.
Across much of Telangana, aquifers recovered. Hyderabad’s did not. Instead, the city continued drawing down groundwater at a pace that left it perilously close to exhausting its annual replenishment.
“What is particularly concerning is that the situation is unfolding at a time when groundwater conditions across much of Telangana have actually improved,” said Kalpana Ramesh, founder of The Rainwater Project.
“The state receives between 900 mm and 1,000 mm of rainfall annually, which is enough to significantly recharge groundwater if it is properly harvested. The challenge is that a large portion of rainwater flows into stormwater drains and leaves the city instead of percolating into the ground.”
The danger lies not only in how much groundwater is being extracted, but in the quality of the water that remains underground.
Monitoring carried out during 2021 found nitrate concentrations ranging from 6 mg/l to 166 mg/l before the monsoon and reaching as high as 259 mg/l after the monsoon. Fluoride concentrations ranged between 0.25 mg/l and 3.68 mg/l during the pre-monsoon period and between 0.35 mg/l and 3.33 mg/l after the monsoon.
In other words, Hyderabad is not merely depleting its underground reserves. It is increasingly relying on groundwater that, in many locations, is showing signs of contamination.
The report attributes groundwater pollution to a combination of urbanisation, industrial effluents, fertiliser use and natural geological processes.
For a city built on hard-rock aquifers, the consequences of sustained over-extraction can be difficult to reverse. As groundwater-bearing fractures lose water, borewell yields fall, wells fail more frequently and new borewells have to be drilled deeper, often at greater cost and with lower chances of success.
The most troubling aspect of Hyderabad’s groundwater story is the timing.
This is not a crisis unfolding during years of failed monsoons. It is unfolding after years of good rainfall, rising groundwater levels and improving conditions across much of Telangana.
Yet Hyderabad is still extracting nearly all the groundwater available to it every year.
If the city is already this close to the limit when conditions are favourable, how resilient will Hyderabad be when the next prolonged dry spell arrives?