The Hindu               12.08.2013

Pockets across city continue to suffer poor water supply

A couple of months into the South West Monsoon, the
Coimbatore Corporation is rich with water. Sources of three major water
supply schemes – the Siruvani and Pilloor reservoirs – have water to the
brim. The reservoirs are also overflowing.

This has
left the Corporation with 200 million litres a day (MLD) to feed around
16 lakh residents. And this works out to roughly about 125 litres a day a
resident. The Corporation has the 200 MLD from Siruvani, which
contributes 98 MLD, and the two Pilloor schemes – Pilloor I gives 63 MLD
and Pilloor II 41 MLD.

The civic body uses the water
to serve the residents of the old city area – 60 wards – and also make
good the deficit in a few added areas.

In addition to
the aforementioned schemes, the Corporation also gets water from two
other schemes – the Kavundampalayam-Vadavalli drinking water supply
scheme, which has River Bhavani as the source and the Aliyar drinking
water supply scheme, which caters to Kurichi, Kuniamuthur and areas
south of the city.

In the Kavundampalayam-Vadavalli
scheme, the Corporation is supposed to get 11.5 million litres a day
from the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board but it gets 12 MLD.
But under the Aliyar scheme, the civic body gets only 5.8 MLD. The
requirement is around 7.5 MLD, though.

With surplus
water, the Corporation has now started alternate day supply across the
city. But a few pockets continue to be left out and most of those
pockets are in the added areas – Thudiyalur, Chinna Vedampatti,
Veerakeralam, Kurichi and a few other places. Within the city, the
residents of SIHS Colony, Singanallur, also continue to suffer.

In
Konavaikalpalayam (Ward 97), the residents get water only once in 18
days. And that too only for a duration of two-and-a-half hours. It is
difficult to manage the 18 days with the water the Corporation supplies,
rues P. Sudha, a home maker from the area.

Unlike
other residents, she cannot rely on ground water because that is
polluted and has been found unfit for use. “Given the circumstances, in
the last three or four days of the supply cycle, the residents suffer
the most.”

Veerakeralam resident K. Govindaraj’s
suffering is no different from Sudha’s. He used to get water once in 20 –
25 days when the water crisis was at its peak. Now it has improved. “I
get water once in 15 days,” he says.

Residents like him in Veerakeralam are forced to buy water to make up for the shortfall.

In
SIHS Colony the situation is slightly better in that the residents get
water once in 10 days. But at least the residents make up with ground
water, says R. Sundararajan, a resident.

Sources in
the Corporation say that the reason for difference in supply has to with
the pipeline available in the area. This is true in the case of added
areas, where the pipelines are old and were laid when the areas were
part of village panchayats, or town panchayats or municipalities and the
supply quantity was only 40 litres per capita a day or 70 litres per
capita a day.

The Corporation standard of water
supply is 135 litres per capita a day. The sources say that the
Corporation is in the process of implementing various schemes to replace
the pipelines. Once the pipeline width is taken care of, all the city’s
residents will be able to get water at uniform intervals and there will
be no disparity.

The Corporation plans to lay a
conveying main pipeline from the Town Hall reservoir to Kurichi to meet
shortfall in water supply from Aliyar scheme during power cuts. Once the
Corporation replaces the pipelines, the entire city will be ready for
the 24×7 water supply scheme.