The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : A ‘connectivity’ KWA did not bargain for

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Wednesday, Jun 04, 2008
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Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

A ‘connectivity’ KWA did not bargain for

G. Mahadevan

Water connections a maze

Interconnection to blame for water woes
Zones to be reorganised

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: When the Kerala Water Authority(KWA) shut down water supply on the 1200 mm cast iron main pipeline ferrying water to the reservoir at Peoroorkada on the night of May 30, why did such areas as Jawahar Nagar, Kowdiar, Pippinmoodu, parts of Sasthamangalam, Pattom or, say, Kuravankonam and even parts of Kannammoola go without water?

This question crossed the minds of not just people who were at the receiving end of dry taps but also of some top officials of the KWA.

Even Minister for Water Resources N.K. Premachandran called up KWA engineers to get an answer to this question. It came as a revelation to the Minister and to some KWA officials that these areas in the city were being serviced by the reservoir at Peroorkada even though they should logically come under the service area of the reservoirs at Observatory Hill or at Vellayambalam.

Within the KWA, this quaint and often illogical enterprise, goes by the name ‘interconnection.’

Over the years, whenever there was water shortage in a particular area or when a bunch connections had to be given in a particular area, KWA officials - on many occasions under political pressure and many a time on their own initiative - looked for the nearest water line that had adequate pressure; never mind which reservoir the line was coming from and where it was going.

Though interconnections appeared an excellent idea in the short-term, as time passed this practice resulted in a catacomb of connections beneath the city that became impossible to keep track of.

Such interconnections, by the score, are there today all over the city’s distribution network. In 2000, when the interim augmentation scheme went on line and when the original 72 mld supply to the city was re-routed - by means of ‘butterfly valves’ at a point beneath the Peroorkada junction - to what would be called the Peroorkada zone, the above mentioned areas came to be serviced by that zone.

In one way, this proved useful because the Peroorkada zone at that point of time had surplus water. But very soon the exponential increase in the demand for drinking water in the sweep land encompassing Kowdiar, Jawahar Nagar and Pippinmoodu and a similar surge in demand from many areas including Peroorkada, Kuravankonam, Pattom and Kesavadasapruam, neutralised this surplus. “Once the JBIC schemes go on line we are considering reorganising the zones in the city so that there is equitable distribution of water,” Managing Director of the KWA C. Suresh Babu told The Hindu.

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