Tamil Nadu   

Surplus water, but nothing to drink

THENI: Periyar and Vaigai reservoirs, major drinking water sources to the district, have comfortable storage. Mullaperiyar, Kottakudi and Vaigai rivers have copious flow. Still, thousands of residents in several parts of the district have no water to drink.

Theni and Bodi municipalities, Palanichettipatti Town Panchayat and several village panchayats, situated along these rivers, have been reeling under acute water crisis.

Theni Municipality could not supply drinking water to its residents even once in five days. Water supply is erratic in several wards.

Theni Municipality has sunk bore wells in Mullaperiyar River to meet its drinking water needs. Inundation of bore wells and accumulation of silt in these wells owing to flash flood in Mullaperiyar has hit drinking water supply. Earlier, water supply was made once in three days to the municipality. Failure to cap the borewells before the flood was the main reason for accumulation of silt in the well, said municipal officials.

With heavy flow in the river, workers could not even locate the well in the river. More over, quality of water supplied through other sources was very poor. With no option, residents in the municipality solely depended on packaged drinking water. They appealed to the municipality to take immediate steps to resume supply.

The situation in several village panchayats is very pathetic. While financially sound town and village panchayats have been taking efforts to resume supply, fund-starving panchayats have been knocking the doors of district administration for purchase of new motors and repairing existing ones to draw water from the river.

Protected water supply could not be made even once in a week to several village panchayats that were situated very close to the river.

Several panchayats have no money to even hire motors to draw water from river or for making even temporary arrangements.

In some villages, panchayat presidents have spent their personal money to repair the motors on the river beds and managed to resume supply.

Villagers appealed to the district administration to work on war footing to streamline the erratic supply of water.

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