The 40,000-odd population of Manapparai municipality, facing untold hardship to get drinking water for months together, can at last heave a sigh of relief.

Chief Minister Jayalalithaa according immediate attention to the representation of District Collector Jayashree Muralidharan in this regard has sanctioned funds for sinking another borewell on the banks of the Cauvery immediately.

Before 1994, the people of this region used to scrounge for water and collect it even from the trains passing through the Manapparai station, recalls L. S. Kannaiyan, chairman of the municipality from 2001-06.

When a combined drinking water scheme was inaugurated by current Chief Minister Jayalalithaa in 1994, the then population of the municipality numbering 25,000 started getting daily supply.

The scheme costing Rs. 43 crore helped supply 40 litres per capita a day in Manapparai and it benefited 50 wayside villages too. The Cauvery-based scheme has a collector well at Manathattai, near Kulithalai, and water is brought through pipelines from a distance of 40 km to Manapparai.

According to V. P. Shankar, former councillor, with power disruptions becoming ubiquitous, the water supply during 2012 started dwindling and the 27 wards in the municipality with 6,000 domestic connections and a number of public fountains could get supply only once a week.

Shantha Veerachamy, chairperson of the municipality, has been pleading for another collector well as the yield from the existing one was dwindling.

Besides, R.V.S. Veeramani, another former councillor, has sought a separate feeder line to make the drinking water scheme really effective.

To a petition filed under the Right to Information Act, P. Ekambaram, Managing Director, Tamil Nadu Water and Drainage Board (TWAD), has communicated to Mr. Shankar that as against the pumping time of 20 hours a day, now the pumping has been resorted to 23 hours because the efficiency of the pumpsets has come down as they are 18 years old. Similarly, the yield of the collector well at Manathattai has also dwindled.

At present the scheme gets 16 hour power supply, he said.

Considering the future requirements, one more collector well has been sanctioned and the works have been taken up at a total cost of Rs. 50 lakh, he added.

As per 2011 census, the municipality has a population of 40,178 and its requirement per day is 3.81 million litres. Under the Manathattai scheme two million litres a day is supplied to Manapparai municipality while one million litres a day is supplied to the municipal residents from local sources.

The Managing Director said that all the nine overhead tanks in the municipality are getting alternate day Cauvery water supply.

He was confident that from February onwards, it would be possible to supply 3.61 million litres a day to Manapparai municipality if the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation were to ensure power supply without any disruption.

However, Mr. Kannaiyan contends that most of the OHTs in the municipality received water supply during March only half a dozen times as against the alternate day supply promised by TWAD.

Citing the recommendation of District Collector that Manapparai drinking water scheme needs “source augmentation ” to mitigate the drought situation, V. Mokkai, Superintending Engineer, Tamil Nadu Water and Drainage Board, Tiruchi-Pudukkottai Circle, on February 19, directed the Executive Engineer, TWAD, Maintenance Division, Tiruchi, that the work for a new collector well “should be taken up and completed at the earliest”.

He has also given a technical sanction for Rs. 34.37 lakh for the work.

Now TWAD has begun the works for sinking the new borewell.

The chairperson of the municipality is happy that at last the residents would be able to get substantially more drinking water once the current works are completed.

In a move to regulate the supply of drinking water, the Municipal Corporation has decided to restrict by 50 per cent the supply of water to bulk buyers such as marriage halls and apartments blocks.

The decision, which will come into effect from April 1, has been taken to prevent water tankers from getting diverted to private buyers and instead to deploy them in areas where people depend on the civic body for water.

The Corporation has17 water tankers, of which 10 are on contract, five run by the Corporation and two are kept as reserve. Each tanker, with a capacity of 8,000 litres, makes 10 trips a day, depending on the demand and season.

Corporation Commissioner R. Nanthagopal told The Hindu on Friday that water was supplied to bulk buyers at a subsidised rate of Rs.570 per tanker as and when required. “But during the peak summer season, when water is scarce, their total needs cannot be met as residents in many other areas depend on water supplied by Corporation tankers. The frequency of trips to the areas where borewells have gone dry can also be increased,” he said.

The drinking water requirement for Madurai Corporation, which has 100 wards, is around 220 million litres a day (MLD), of which 115 million litres are drawn from Vaigai dam. To augment water sources in time for the ensuing summer and prevent scarcity, the Corporation plans to sink 400 deep borewells in the city fringes soon. “The work will start on April 15. We will avail the expertise of hydrologists from the Tamil Nadu Water and Drainage Board (TWAD) and the Public Works Department in identifying the groundwater potential in various areas. Through the new borewells, we are expecting to tap additional 25 MLD,” Mr. Nanthagopal said.

A. Mathuram, City Engineer in-charge, said that the 400 borewells will be ready for operation by May 15. “In anticipation of a water crisis, we want to have a plan of action ready. The TWAD team will explore the possibilities and based on its report, the Corporation will sink borewells in the city peripheries from where drinking water will be supplied to the city,” he added. The Corporation has sunk 2,050 borewells and potable water is filled in 20 plastic tanks, with a capacity of 1,500 litres, in every ward.

Mr. Nanthagopal said that a ward-specific micro plan was prepared by the Corporation by taking into account the number of wells in that locality and water yield. Irrigation wells in areas annexed recently had been identified. “We have stepped up “water vigilance” and action will be taken against those who are illegally tapping water using motor pumps. Water connections of such persons will be severed and our engineers are inspecting every area,” he said.

The Corporation’s total population is around 16 lakhs and out of the daily water requirement of nearly 220 million litres, 140 MLD is supplied. Earlier, it had 72 wards and another 28 were added to the civic body last year.

According to Mr. Mathuram, the per capita requirement of water in the city is 135 litres a day and the civic body supplies 90 litres.