BENGALURU: The precarious nature of Bengaluru's complete dependence on Cauvery water being pumped from a distance of nearly 100 kms came to the fore on Thursday evening. A fierce hail storm at Harohalli in Ramanagara Taluk, plunged the area into darkness abruptly putting an end to water being pumped at the pumping station here.
With electricity supply finally restored by KPTCL an hour later, there was a break in water pumped to the city. However, since it was only disrupted for 90 minutes, the city would be supplied its regular quota of water with some adjustments, officials said.
The city gets nearly 1475 million litres of water per day (since April 4) drawn from Shiva Anaicut reservoir to Thoraikadanahalli (TK Halli) reservoir in Mandya district from where it is undergoes a complicated process of water being pumped to Bengaluru using mammoth pumps via the three pumping stations located at TK Halli, Harohalli and Tataguni.
Pumping is done at all these stations work 24x7 throughout the year so that water supply is uninterrupted. A top official said that power supply conked off around 4.45 pm at Harohalli and came an hour later.
"The main power line from Somanahalli to Harohalli, which is a 220 KV line, tripped and pumping came to an abrupt halt. After supply was restored, the pumps were switched on. It takes sometime for pumping to resume after complete stoppage and so by 6:10 pm, we were able to resume water supply to the City," he explained.
Asked if the City would be affected, another official said that the Ground Level Reservoirs (GLRs) which store the pumped water across different Divisions would have some buffer stock available.
"Since the water that could have been pumped during the stoppage time is less than 100 million litres, we can avail it from our buffer stock in the GLRs. And if required, minor amounts like 5 million litres can be reduced across different areas so that it would not affect water being supplied to the public in a huge quantity in any specific area," he explained.