Kolhapur Water Crisis: After Bengaluru, another major city in Maharashtra – Kolhapur – is now facing water crisis with the arrival of Summer. Many locals are walking for kilometres together to fetch a drop of water. Several locals just like 60-year-old Jaitun Abdul Varunkar and her neighbours in Panhalkarwadi, a remote hamlet of 150 residents in Shahuwadi, are struggling to get water from drying-up streams.
Kolhapur is facing a water crisis at a time when this taluka is one of the areas in the district that gets the most rainfall during monsoon.
The water crisis in this area is so intense with harsh summer temperatures that tankers come with borewell water and charge as much as Rs 100 for a 200-litre barrel.
Locals expressed resentment and said if the government is not addressing their concern, they will boycott the Lok Sabha Elections 2024.
“The authorities are not at all serious about tackling water scarcity. This year, we won’t vote in the LS elections,” Shamrao Patil, one local, was quoted as saying by TOI.
Apart from Kolhapur, the other areas that are facing water Crisis include Satara, Sangli and Solapur. The water requirement by tankers in these areas has jumped 31% in Satara, 84% in Solapur and 13% in Sangli within a span of a month, TOI reported.
The development comes as the water storage levels in dams, ponds and lakes is declining in these areas with the arrival of summer.
The Warna dam in Sangli has just 23% water stock from 45% last year, in Solapur district, Ujani dam has now zero water stock as against 27% water stock last year during the same period.
In the similar manner, the water stock in dams in Satara has declined to 38% from 45% last year. Dams in other areas such as Man, Khatav, Atpadi, Jat, Kavathe Mahankal, Sangola and Mangalwedha are also drying up.
Nearly 100 villages in Satara’s Man and Khatav areas are facing severe water scarcity and completely depend on water tankers.
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