Owing to poor monsoon and rapidly depleting storage level in the dam near Kodaikanal Observatory, water crisis has returned to the town.
Many streams on the upper and lower Kodaikanal hills are dry. At present, residents of the town get water once in eight days and others living in the upper ridge areas get water once in 10-12 days. With poor storage in the dam, Kodaikanal Municipality has been struggling to maintain supply to residential areas as it solely depends on bore wells near the lake to meet drinking water needs. “We do not know how long these sources will help,” worried municipal officials.
With good flow of tourists during holidays and weekends, water requirement of hotels and restaurants had not come down till now, they added. The demand for drinking water has increased manifold in the last few decades owing to rapid increase in population and quantum jump in arrival of tourists to the hill station. With a total ban on sinking borewells in effect, residents use the water supplied by the municipality for all purposes.
“Water supply has not been made to several wards for the past nine days. How can we store so much water needed for a week?”, asked Paul Raj, a resident.
Cashing in on the situation, some private water suppliers have gone to the extent of diverting drinking water supplied from Kodaikanal lake to other purposes.
Monsoon failure was not the only reason for water shortage. Large-scale destruction of marshy grasslands in catchment areas of the supply dam in the name of development, encroachment and proliferation of mono crops have damaged the ecosystem severely, environmentalists said.
Empty promises
Leaders of various political parties promised implementation of Gundar scheme during every election. But their promises remained only on paper.
