The Hindu : Acute water crisis in Kodaikanal

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 25, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Others

Acute water crisis in Kodaikanal

By K. Raju

KODAIKANAL, MARCH 24. Kodaikanal hills, known for its rich flora and fauna and natural resources, has been facing acute water crisis owing to failure of monsoon and rapid depletion of storage in the dam near the Kodaikanal observatory, main drinking water source to the town.

Many streams on the upper and lower Palani hills are dry. People have to trek many kilometres for fetching water.

Though the Kodaikanal Municipality has said that supply was restricted to once in four days to the town, residents of the upper ridge areas receive water once in 10 days and in some areas once in 12 days. Water does not reach high-end areas owing to low pressure in the dam.

Spread over 500 acres, the supply dam has only 17 feet of water with 10 feet covered in silt. Water cannot be pumped below 10 feet. With the present storage, sources in the Municipality said it had been struggling to meet growing drinking water needs during summer. Some officials admitted that the situation was grim.

Demand for drinking has increased manifold during the past two decades owing to rapid increase in population and quantum jump in number of tourists visiting the hill station. The Kodaikanal lake, a perennial one and the main drinking water source to Palani town, is facing crisis owing to severe drought. There is a significant fall in the lake's level. The situation in rural areas is worse. Indiscriminate sinking of borewells and pumping of groundwater for construction activities brought down the water table in urban areas. It disturbed the flow to 16 dams from Amaravathi to Sothuparai dam around the Palani hills which is feeding about 50 lakh people.

Though the Municipality blamed nature for the present situation, environmentalists and ecologists say that man caused considerable damage to the hills. Conversion of large tracts of marshy grasslands in catchments of the supply dam near Manavaruthan Solai into monoculture groves disturbed the eco-system severely. The grasslands acted as sponge in retaining rainwater. Massive cultivation of wattle, pine and eucalyptus trees on the upper and lower hills destroyed regeneration completely and increased soil erosion. .

All watersheds are shattered owing to introduction of monoculture. Degradation of nature had its direct impact on endangered species. Destruction of marshy grasslands snapped the food chain. Migration of wild animals widened the prey-predator ratio. With no food, animals invaded farmlands and destroyed crops.

Construction of checkdams in upper streams for preventing soil erosion, removal of silt in supply tank, destruction of mono-crops in catchments and creation of Shola forests and grasslands in upper areas alone would help in solving the drinking water crisis in the town and in rural areas, the environmentalists say.

Lack of long-term planning and strategy to improve drinking water sources was the main reason for the crisis. Already, ecologists, naturalists and environmental organisations were tired of sounding the alarm. The princes of hills, now is in the red.

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