Nearly six months after they were merged with the Chennai Corporation, many of the localities are yet to receive proper drinking water supply from Chennai Metrowater. Residents of the areas complain that they continue to manage with groundwater and private water resources.
Palavakkam residents said every time the motor pump of the borewell supplying water to the area develops a fault, the households in the locality have to suffer without supply for a week until it is set right. The erstwhile panchayat authorities had installed a few street taps sourcing water from the borewell.
M.N. Anand, a resident of Maniammai Street, Palavakkam, said five pots of water received daily from street tap was the only source of drinking water as the groundwater is brackish. “If the public tap becomes faulty, I have to go to farmhouses in Neelankarai to fetch water, a distance of nearly two km,” he said.
D. Viswanathan, ward 185 councillor, said there is a need for more street taps in the area. Water supply pipeline is nearly two decades old and cannot cater for the growing population.
M. Narayanan, a resident of Kosapur in Manali zone, said the locality is yet to be provided tanker supply as assured by the Chennai Metrowater. As there are leaks in the overhead tank, drinking water supply which otherwise should last for three hours, gets drained within an hour.
Residents want the repair works in water lines and tanks to be accorded priority. In some areas coming under Madhavaram and Ambattur zones, residents said they were completely dependent on groundwater. G. Alamelu of Krishnapuram, Ambattur, said the erstwhile municipality did not supply water. “We expected that problems will be solved after the city expansion. A few hand pumps connected to the water line are not in use as the borewell has dried up. I buy a pot of water for Rs.5 from private tanker operators,” she said.
Officials of the Chennai Metrowater said locations for 16 filling stations and underground tanks and installation of street tanks are being identified. Once the project worth Rs.10 crore is completed, water supply to the expanded areas would be streamlined.
At present, 78.5 million litres of water a day is being supplied to the merged areas. Of this, 76 mld is supplied through pipeline. Besides the 2,700 street tanks available, 436 tanks are being erected. Nearly 50 have been erected so far.
About 50 additional tankers have been allotted to the areas besides the 52 lorries plying to the eight new zones. “We aim to augment the supply by another 50 mld and complete works of that need to be taken up urgently in three months,” an official said.
