The city’s suburbs are reeling under acute shortage of drinking water with wells in the areas drying up and the Kerala Water Authority being unable to meet the demand for piped water in the affected areas.
Residents of Vilavoorkkal, Kattakkada, Malayinkeezhu, Maranalloor, and Kunnathukal have been facing severe shortage of water for the past one month as a majority of the wells in the areas has gone dry due to depletion of the groundwater table. Though the KWA has provided drinking water connectivity to certain areas, the utility is unable to provide uninterrupted supply, except to Kattakkada town.
In most of the affected areas, the KWA pumps treated water only twice a week and in certain parts it is once a week. “We are trying to meet the additional requirement by deploying tankers as requested by the district administration. Recently, the District Collector had convened a meeting to chalk out a contingency plan and accordingly, we will be deploying our tankers to supply water,” said a KWA official.
Kalippara project
The water crisis, the official said, was due to the delay in commissioning the Kalippara project, conceived by the KWA two decades ago to solve water shortage in villages under the Neyyattinkara taluk. The project, work on which began in 1994, aims at taking water from the Neyyar to the 36-million-litre capacity treatment plant at Kalippara and distributing the treated water to several places at Neyyattinkara, Parassala, Kattakkada, Kulathoor, Karode, Malayinkeezhu and Kunnathukal. The project was nearing completion and was likely to be commissioned within five months, said another official.
Replacement work
Acute water shortage has been reported from Maniamkode, Ozhappakonam and Poonkavu, near Nedumangad. The shortage in these places, a KWA official said, was due to work on replacing 500-mm primo pipes with ductile iron pipes for ferrying water from the 13.7 million litre a day treatment plant at Perumala. “In these places too, there has been reports of wells drying up due to depletion of groundwater. The closure of primo pipe for replacement has further added to the crisis. Water is being supplied in tankers to the affected places,” the official said.