Ramanthapuram: In a bid to meet the drinking water requirements, the District administration has established mini Reverse Osmosis (RO) plants in 79 villages which had no drinking water source or access to Cauvery water supplied to the district under the Ramanathapuram combined drinking water supply scheme, since June 2009.
After inspecting the RO plant at Alangulam in Thirupullani block, during a press tour on Wednesday, Collector S. Natarajan told reporters that villages located in the coastal belt and those villages which could not get Cauvery water had been provided with the plants.
While the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) has installed RO plants in 59 villages, 20 other ROs were installed with panchayat funds. Each plant has been set up at a cost of Rs 8.5 lakh and the capacities varied from 3,000 to 5,000 litres a day to cater to the drinking water needs of the households.
The RO Plant, established at Alangulam about seven months ago, literally quenched the thirst of the villagers, who bought drinking water supplied through tankers or fetched water from a nearby pond. The water table in the village had gone beyond 300 ft and the groundwater had 2420 Total Dissolved Solids (TDS).
The RO plant converted the water into potable water, reducing the TDS to 56, the Collector said. Similarly, the hardness of the groundater was also reduced from 400 points to 12, through the RO plant, he said.
Mr K Kumaravel, village president, said about 250 households were benefited from the plant on daily basis. The private firm, which had set up the plant, had given one year warranty and inspected the facility once in a week, he said.
As the arid district has received less water during the northeast monsoon, the district administration has ordered digging of bore wells in 88 villages. Besides, the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD) has taken up work to make use of 91 defunct bore wells for percolation of water and cleaning up the recharge shafts, he said.
These works had been undertaken at a total cost of Rs 2.8 crore, he added.
