Acute shortage of water at Kotri Barrage has pressed the panic button in the Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) Hyderabad, to replenish it's water lagoons for 15 days keeping in mind the fact that existing shortage, according to irrigation officials, is going to persist for around three weeks. When contacted, the Managing Director of Wasa, Bashir Awan, maintained that he had asked the concerned executive engineers to fill all the water reservoirs for meeting water requirement of the district that required around 60 million gallons of water daily from its new and old filter plants and four other reservoirs of Hala Naka, Paretabad, unit-4 Latifabad and Hussainabad. Wasa would start lifting water from its turbine established at upstream Kotri and that normally functions in closure period of the barrage. According to Wasa, it lifts 30MG water daily from upstream and now it would operate from Tuesday morning to lift required supply of water for storage purpose in water lagoons. There are three lagoons of Wasa that have an overall capacity of 750 to 800 million gallons following desilting of two old lagoons and creation of one more. Earlier, the capacity of the lagoons stood at 470 million gallons. The city requires 60 MG water on a daily basis and, at present, 10 days of water storage is available in the three lagoons. According to irrigation officials, given the requirement of water under water accord, currently around 50 to 60 per cent of water shortage was being experienced in the three barrages nowadays and the situation was not going to improve before two to three weeks. "At least 40,000 cusec of water is needed if we talk about water needs during the current month', said an official. Discharges for the four off-taking canals have been too scant despite the fact that two of the canals