The Hindu : Front Page : Power cut hits water supply to SIPCOT units

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 25, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Front Page

Front Page

Power cut hits water supply to SIPCOT units

Karthik Madhavan

— File Photo: M. Govarthan

Seek remedy: The industries in SIPCOT estate in Perundurai do not get adequate water supply and this has affected their business.

ERODE: Industrial units at the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) estate in Perundurai near here do not get adequate water supply and this has affected their business.

The 165 industries, a good number of which are textile processing units, require about 12 million litres a day (mld). The supply, however, is only nearly 8 mld owing to frequent power cuts.

Informed sources in the SIPCOT estate say the water they get is drawn from the Bhavani. It gets pumped from a booster station near Bhavani town and goes to Nasiyanur, from where it is pumped again to another booster station at Periyavettuvapalayam, near the estate.

The Bhavani and Nasiyanur booster stations until a few days ago suffered power cuts of three hours each. The Periyavettuvapalayam station went without power for two hours. In effect, the different timings of power cuts led to a situation where the supply line went without power for eight hours a day.

The sources said that when the power cut was for eight hours, the supply came down to nearly 6 mld. As a result of the poor supply, industrial units went without water.

The SIPCOT management wrote to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, Erode, requesting it to streamline power supply so that water supply was not disrupted. Consequently, power cuts at the Bhavani and Nasiyanur stations were synchronised. This has resulted in the power cut on the water supply line coming down to five hours a day. As a result, water supply has increased to about 8 mld. However, the supply is still inadequate.

This has forced textile processing units to augment supply using tanker lorries. The 50-odd processing mills buy water and that has affected business, Erode District Textiles Processors’ Association secretary P.K.N. Chandrasekaran said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page