The Hindu                  23.04.2013

Civic body to hire more water tankers

Staff Reporter

Demand for potable water increasing in Erode.

As most parts of the Erode town are reeling under severe water scarcity, the civic body has planned to hire more tankers to supply water to the people, particularly those living in the areas that are not served with piped supply.

The demand for the supply of water through tanker lorries of the civic body had gone up as a majority of the borewells in the town went dry due to monsoon failure. People in many areas are taking to streets demanding adequate supply of water. The problem is acute in the areas that are not connected with the water pipeline network of the civic body.

Many residents said that they could not afford to buy water from the private suppliers on a regular basis and urged the civic body to improve the supply through tankers.

Officials said that the civic body would hire private tankers as it did not have adequate number of vehicles to supply water.

“Currently, we have only six vehicles and each tanker is making five trips a day. We have hired five private tankers that are supplying water to a few areas now. We will be hiring more vehicles as the demand for water is growing,” a senior official said.

The demand is now coming from the areas that have piped supply as well. The soaring mercury has led to a sharp increase in the demand for water, the official adds.

The civic body could not meet the growing water requirements this summer with the 56 million litres of water that it receives from the existing water supply schemes. The existing schemes are grossly inadequate as the population in the town almost tripled and more areas had been included in the Corporation limits, officials point out.

Four municipalities, two town panchayats and five village panchayats were merged with the Corporation recently.

The Hindu                   22.04.2013

Corporation plans to lay PVC pipes

Special Correspondent

The Corporation, in a bid to improve its drinking water distribution system, has decided to replace the 30-year old iron pipes with Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC) rigid pipes to prevent leakages that cause huge loss of water in the water-starved urban civic body.

As the old iron drinking water distribution pipes cannot withstand even a slight increase in pressure being given to take drinking water to the tail-end areas, it resulted in huge loss of water almost everyday. To avoid this, the Corporation decided to replace the iron pipes with High Density Poly Ethylene (HDPE) distribution pipes, which can withstand even high pressure while effectively taking water to the distribution points without any problem.

However, the recent unprecedented increase in the prices of HDPE raw material caused steep hike in the pipe cost, forcing the contractors to quote higher price for executing the work, worth about Rs. 3 crore. As the price quoted by the bidders was much higher than the ‘schedule of rate’ fixed by the TWAD Board, a pre-bid meeting was organised recently.

But the aspirants were still reluctant of going ahead with the contract and explained the reason behind their hesitation. Having understood the problem involved in the assignment, the Corporation has decided to lay rigid PVC pipes instead of going in for HDPE pipes after getting expert opinion in this connection.

If this decision gets the council’s nod, iron distribution pipes will be replaced in 26 places at the cost of Rs. 3 crore, Corporation sources said.