Though Palakkad is the worst-drought affected district in the State, it slakes the thirst of over a dozen water guzzling enterprises at concessional tariff in the Kanjikode industrial belt. They include two major plants manufacturing beer and distilled spirit meant for alcoholic beverages. A huge portion of the drinking water stored at Kerala’s largest reservoir, Malampuzha, is still being diverted to these units without any legal binding by the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) and the action is now triggering large-scale public protest.
As per official data received by Right to Information (RTI) activist P. Rajeev, liquor manufacturing major UB Distilleries alone gets 5 lakh litres of treated drinking water on a daily basis from Malampuzha reservoir at discounted tariff and that too by using the supply chain of KWA. Liquor manufacturer MP Distilleries gets 33,000 litres of treated drinking water from the reservoir daily at the same discounted tariff. The local community says these two liquor manufacturers had caused drinking water scarcity in the locality along with Pepsico India’s bottling plant at Pudussery that allegedly draws nearly 6.5 to 15 lakh litres of groundwater a day in the place of the permission granted to fetch 2.4 lakh litres of ground water daily.
“Liquor barons have free access round the clock to the water resources of the region while the drinking water supply in the region is limited to just one hour a day,” points out Mr Rajeev. “The water guzzlers of Kanjikode include half-a-dozen liquor manufacturing plants, dyeing units, steel rerolling mills and iron smelting units. We are in the process of getting accurate official data on the water consumption by these units. Though the officials confirm that the units consume huge quantities of water more than their permissible limits, there is no governmental action to end their exploitation,” said Mr. Rajeev.
Interestingly, the RTI reply given by the regional office of KWA confirms that there was no formal agreement between the State government agency and managements of UB Distilleries and MP Distilleries over round the clock supply of drinking water for industrial use.
“Both the companies and the KWA are violating an existing government order that imposes a 75 per cent cut on water consumption by enterprises, which use water as the main raw material.
