The Hindu 25.01.2010

Quality of drinking water posing health risk City Ballot Problems

Krishnaprasad

— Photo: K. Gopinathan

POOR PLANNING: Traffic jams are common on the road by the cable-stayed bridge near the Krishnarajapuram Railway Station in Bangalore.

Bangalore: “Parched” and “delinked.” These words describe the needs of people living in the nine wards coming under K.R. Puram Assembly Constituency.

For a majority of the population living in the wards — Horamavu, Ramamurthy Nagar, Vijnanapura, K.R, Puram, Basavanapura, Devasandra and A Narayanapura — getting safe drinking water is the main concern.

Many areas (except HAL Airport and parts of Vijnanapura wards) were under the control of the city municipal councils (CMCs) before they were brought under the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike in 2006, and they largely depend on water supplied through private tankers.

Some localities have water supply through pipelines connected to borewells sunk by the then CMCs but the quality of water is posing a risk to the health of residents.

“The pipelines were laid two years ago for supplying Cauvery water after collecting contribution from residents. Now several houses have metered water connection but there is not a single drop of water. We will get Cauvery water only by the end of 2012 as the main connection is yet to be laid under the Cauvery water scheme,” points out N.G. Meganath of Ramamurthy Nagar.

K. Surendran, a resident of A. Narayanapura says consumption of borewell water is posing a health risk as water in all the tanks in the surrounding areas is contaminated, and many tanks are filled with only sewage.

The constituency, which consists of a 58.6-sq km area, has a large number of private layouts, a majority of which are “unauthorised.”

Each of these layouts exist as “islands” with roads and drainage systems not properly connected.

In some old localities such as Udayanagar, the roads are so narrow that no four-wheeler can reach the houses during emergencies. Autorickshaws can barely enter the narrow lanes.

“Easy accessibility can be achieved if the authorities establish a road network by linking the roads of these layouts. The absence of connected roads forces people to walk several miles to use public transport,” says S. Arumugam of Basavanapura.

The cable-stayed bridge built near K.R. Puram Railway Station is now being described as “an example for how not to build a flyover”. Ganesh Murthy of K.R. Puram says the bridge causes traffic jams every day and it has now become an example for “bad planning and bad design” by the authorities.

The Hindu 21.01.2010

Piped water yet to reach 40 per cent of area in capital city

Staff Reporter

BHUBANESWAR: Although volume of daily drinking water supply to Bhubaneswar is almost double of the required, more than 40 per cent of area under capital city is yet to be fully covered with pipe water supply.

According to a study carried out by MASS, a non-governmental organisation, out of 60 wards, four are yet to be covered and 23 wards have been partially covered.

The study was presented before authorities of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, Public Health Department and other city offices at a workshop organised by Water and Sanitation Programme, South Asia and MASS here recently.

“People living in ward number of 4, 7, 59 and 60 have not yet connected with piped water supply.

In most of the wards such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 8, whole population has not been covered with drinking pipe water supply,” said Ranjan Kumar Panda presenting the study here.

He said only about 54,000 out of about 1,50,000 households in Bhubaneswar had domestic connection which implied one third of the households were out of drinking water supply network.

Rest of the households collect water from 578 public stand posts, resort to theft or depend on their own sources.

“Bhubaneswar is among the fastest growing cities of the country.

The population has grown from 40,000 to 9 lakhs in just six decades. Similarly, the area has expanded from 16.5 Sq. km to 135 sq km.

This growth rate poses challenge for any service provider, more so with water service provider,” Mr. Panda said.

Households with tap connections were getting 4,600 litres daily while other households were facing a lot of hardship that implied that there were greater geographical and other inequalities with regard to supply and access to water, he said.

Tough challenge

The study says Public Health Engineering Department faces tough challenge to ensure uninterrupted pure drinking water supply since almost all water pipes were laid in 1950 and 1960.

“Moreover, seven water chlorination points were built in 1954, 1960, 1968, 1974, 1975, 1987 and 1996. That means all purification centres needed to be upgraded,” it point out. The challenge gets complicated with mushrooming of slums and fast expansion of the city. The city is having about 300 slums inhabited by about 2 lakh dwellers.

Reacting to the situation BMC Commissioner Gadadhar Parida said, “although drinking water does not come under corporation’s jurisdiction, we are equally concerned about rational supply of quality and quantity of drinking water to all denizens.”