Is India’s thirst for fresh water causing ocean levels to rise? Experts warn that the backwaters of Kerala and the deltas of the Ganga, Krishna, Godavari, Cauvery and Mahanadi on the east coast are being threatened by rising ocean levels.

A recent Nasa study had confirmed that water tables in north India were declining at the rate of one foot per year across the northern states of India with even the ministry of water resources admitting that 109 cubic kilometres of water was lost from the aquifers along the Indus river alone.

Auditor Gives Point-By-Point Rebuttal On Reliance’s Claims Of Lack Of Expertise

With the water levels in reservoirs depleting fast, complaints over an acute scarcity of water are pouring in from almost all parts of Hyderabad city. Citizens say a large number of areas in the city are short of water now.

The Water Board has started pumping water from the Osmansagar reservoir. The situation will get worse if there is no rain, as reservoirs have to get the inflows by June 15.

The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, has approved Hyderabad Water Board's proposal for a HUDCO loan of Rs 1,670 crore to execute the Krishna Phase III project.

“The Godavari, Krishna and Cauvery rivers have experienced dramatic changes in flow due to the construction of dams, anthropogenic contamination and other activities, National Geophysical Research Institute (CSIR-NGRI) senior scientist Dr S. Masood Ahmad said here on Sunday.

“The Godavari would require significant intervention to protect its ecosystems and the people, who are mainly dependent on its river basins,” he added. (About 135 million people inhabit the river basins of the Godavari and Krishna.)

Needed, it says, for covering its return and risks also wants govt to stick to contract on output sharing

Stuck with $4.2 a million British thermal units (mBtu) price for its natural gas till 2014, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) has sought from the government an import-parity price for sale of gas from its D6 field in the Krishna-Godavari basin (KG-D6). Doing so would allow KG gas to be sold at the import price for liquefied natural gas (LNG). If approved, this would mean KG gas could be sold at over three times its current price.

On the face of it, the Union petroleum ministry has finally taken some action in its slow-fuse battle with Reliance Industries over the D6 block in the Krishna-Godavari basin.

Illegal stone quarrying near Almatti can have disastrous consequences, fear greens. Stone quarrying goes on unhindered on the banks of River Krishna, even as locals allege that officials of Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigam Limited (KBJNL) are turning a blind eye to the illegality.

The national river policy stipulates that stone quarrying should not be conducted on the banks of any river. It is feared that the quarrying may cause damage to the nearby bridges on the Parvati Katta road (a road bridge and the railway bridge) and the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya. The dawn to dusk stone quarrying in and around the Krishna river basin has invited the wrath of environmentalists.

The city’s water problem is turning acute as a large number of borewells have dried up, with experts attributing the worsening situation to the absence of rainwater harvesting (RWH) structures.