The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Vijayawada News : Sewage woes abound

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 19, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada

Sewage woes abound

By G.V. Ramana Rao

VIJAYAWADA, MARCH 18. The fifth division of the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) is perched on the east-facing slope of Indrakeeladri Hill. So, providing amenities to people is expensive and tedious.

The huge booster pumps used to lift drinking water to homes and reservoirs on hill slopes are a power-guzzling burden on the city's exchequer. The public health staff have to physically carry down the garbage, as vehicles cannot go up the slopes the only access to which are steps.

Sivakoti Madhu, son of CPI leader, Sivakoti Narayanachari, is its corporator. Ninety per cent of the houses in the fifth division do not have septic tanks and liquid waste from the toilets and kitchens is released into the storm-water drains. Rodents that are attracted to the tit-bits in the drains wreak havoc burrowing holes shortening the life of the concrete structures.

Experimental basis

To protect the storm-water drains, the VMC, on an experimental basis, laid drainpipes from Rajagirivari Street to a septic tank at the foot of the hill next to the Telaprolu Bapanayya School. The sewage water is pumped out from the septic tank into the sewerage of One Town.

The drinking water problem in the division was alleviated to some degree with the construction of an overhead reservoir with a capacity of one lakh gallons. The clearing of garbage is restricted by the absence of a road for transportation vehicles. A bridge is needed across the sewerage that flows down the hill near Peethanivari Street. The liquid waste from houses above a ghat road that runs through the fifth division and the fourth, sixth and seventh divisions flows down the slope at Peethanivari Street. "When we built our house, the situation was different. But people began building houses higher up the hill slope and the sewage began to increase. Now we cannot live here because of the stench, nobody will rent or buy it," says K.Mahalakshmi, a resident of Peethanivari Street.

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