The Hindu 05.04.2013
Water crisis hits Kodaikanal hills
Demand for water has increased manifold.
Kodaikanal is facing acute water crisis owing to failure
of monsoon and rapidly depleting storage level in the dam near
Kodaikanal Observatory, the main drinking water source for the town.
Many
streams on the upper and lower Palani hills are dry. At present
residents in the town get water once in seven days and residents living
in the upper ridge areas receive water once in 10 or 15 days.
Kodaikanal
Municipality has been solely dependent on bore wells near the lake to
slake the drinking water needs of the residents. “But no one knows how
long these sources will last,” worried municipal officials say.
Some
private water suppliers in order to retain their clients have gone to
the extent of buying land that has some water source like streams.
They collect water from these streams and then supply it to hotels and restaurants.
The
situation is set to aggravate after April 15 as inflow of tourists from
various parts of the country will increase manifold. Water needs of
hotels and restaurants will go up further, said Gopinath, a resident in
Anandagiri.
With a blanket ban on sinking of bore
wells, the water supplied by the municipality is used by the residents
for all purposes. “Where and how can we store so much water needed for
one week”, he wondered.
Demand for drinking water has
increased manifold in the last three decades owing to rapid increase in
population and quantum jump in number of tourists visiting the hill
station.
While officials blame failure of monsoon for
the water shortage, environmentalists and ecologists charge that it is
man-made. Destruction of large tracts of marshy grasslands in catchment
areas of supply dam, rapid growth of mono crops like eucalyptus have
damaged the eco-system severely, said S. Raj Mohan, an environmentalist.
Preventing
soil erosion, removal of silt in supply tank, creation of Shola forests
and protection of grasslands in upper reaches will certainly help in
solving drinking water crisis in the town, he added.
Lack
of long-term planning and strategy to improve drinking water sources
are the prime reasons for the crisis, said environmentalists.
As
streams dry up in Kodaikanal, it has a direct impact on Palani town and
nearby areas. It is these streams that feed more than 10 dams including
Amaravathi and Palar-Porundhalar dam in Palani to Sothuparai dam in
Theni district.
Due to poor storage level in these
dams, residents in the temple town have been getting water once in four
days. Earlier, they received water daily.
