₹23,000 crore to keep the taps on: what Visakhapatnam’s data centre boom will cost in water storage

Residents form up near a water tanker to collect water as groundwater levels drop, in Visakhapatnam. File | Photo Credit: V. Raju Visakhapatnam can store about 32 tmc ft of water. Within a few years, with data centres and new industry, it will need more than 60. That gap is the subject of a proposal the Vizag Development Council has sent to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, seeking ₹15,000 crore to ₹23,000 crore for new reservoirs, and of a case that Telugu Desam Party (TDP) State president and Gajuwaka MLA Palla Srinivasa Rao says he is pursuing with the Chief Minister himself.The proposal, from council president O. Naresh Kumar, puts the city’s municipal need at 40 to 49 crore litres a day (0.014 to 0.017 tmc ft), against a current supply of 33 to 40 crore litres (0.012 to 0.014 tmc ft). Industrial expansion and data centres will push daily needs past 150 crore litres (0.053 tmc ft), or over 60 tmc ft a year.The money would expand the Yeleru reservoir and build balancing reservoirs to bridge the deficit.The city’s storage of about 32.4 tmc ft is spread across Yeleru (24.11 tmc ft), Raiwada (3.6 tmc ft) and Tatipudi (3.33 tmc ft), the letter says. Long-term civic and industrial demand, driven by data centre and manufacturing expansions of up to 9 GW, is projected to exceed 60 tmc ft. Bridging that gap requires new infrastructure to capture allocated monsoon floodwaters.“Visakhapatnam doesn’t have the sufficient storage facility of water for present needs. I agree. We need storage facility for at least 5TMC of water. Our government is successfully working out to procure water from the Godavari river. But, storing the water here is the present task we have to focus. I am personally pursuing this matter with the CM,” Mr. Srinivasa Rao told The Hindu.The proposed three-part plan begins with restoring the carrying capacity of local water sources through desilting, bund strengthening, and real-time monitoring. It also requires expanding the Yeleru reservoir’s total capacity to 40 tmc ft—a project necessitating up to 5,000 acres of land—while building five new 5-tmc-ft balancing reservoirs around Greater Visakhapatnam to meet rising industrial demands.“These five structures would require a cumulative land footprint of 10,000 to 12,500 acres with depths of 20 to 25 meters, backed by dedicated feeder canal networks linked to the Polavaram Left Main Canal. This infrastructure package will seamlessly capture surplus monsoon floodwaters, prevent runoff waste, and bridge the massive future deficit,” said an irrigation department official.Visakhapatnam’s industrial growth, with hyperscale data centres, green hydrogen plants and heavy manufacturing units coming up, sits against thin water availability. The region has also had a poor monsoon, with a rainfall deficit exceeding 50% across the coastal belt this season.While the Polavaram Left Main Canal is to bring 23.44 tmc ft a year to the district, the absence of adequate intermediate storage means monsoon releases cannot be captured and run off to the sea. Published - September 10, 2026 04:49 pm IST