Suriyur residents launch water war against bottling unit

 

In 2011, when LA Bottlers Private Limited, a bottling unit that took bulk orders from Pepsi India, commenced operations from the site and word spread that they would be extracting groundwater to produce soft drinks, the villagers’ enthusiasm turned into despair.“The doom began on the day the factory started operations,” said Gopal, sitting in an open playground at Periya Suriyur on Thursday. Although it is time to harvest the samba crop, he has not even completed transplanting the crop. Gopal and his neighbours eagerly await the rains to begin transplantation as they do not have sufficient groundwater for irrigation.

 

“Suriyur and the surrounding villages do not have any water source other than rain. Yet, we could get groundwater at just 10 or 15 feet until a few years ago. Villagers dug wells and used the water for raising three successful crops every year,” said S. Marimuthu, president of the adjoining Kanthaloor village panchayat, who has been spearheading a campaign against the bottling unit for the past several years.

 

The plot here is similar to any village in India where an industrial unit comes up usurping agricultural land. Villagers fear the loss of livelihood and resist industrialisation. Usually, villagers fight a losing battle against big corporates, barring a few exceptional instances such as at Plachimada in Kerala.

 

This intense conflict has been the topic of several films, most recently in Vijay-starrer Kaththi. Villagers of Suriyur believe that the movie is based on their struggle, except that there is no superhero to ensure that all is well in the end.

According to Ramaiah, whose wife Sarada Devi Ramaiah is the Suriyur panchayat president, the bottling unit has dug six giant borewells from which they extract water day and night.

“Every day, hundreds of lorries make several trips transporting the soft drinks that are made here. In the three years that the factory has been operating here, groundwater has depleted by at least 50 feet,” says Ramaiah, also a farmer with several acres of land.

To illustrate the point, Ramaiah and Gopal took this reporter to Gopal’s field, a significant portion of which remains unused. Pointing to a large well in his farm that has been recently deepened by at least 90 feet, Gopal says that he is still struggling to pump out enough water to irrigate all his land. 

 

“The difference is more alarming during summer. If the water level in my well is 80 feet deep in the morning, it goes down by at least five feet by late evening. So much water is being extracted by the firm that at this rate, the entire village and surrounding areas will be barren in a few years,” Gopal says.

Villagers of Suriyur and Kanthaloor have staged several protests demanding the closure of the unit. 

 

They have approached the district administration and even the Madurai bench of the Madras high court seeking the closure of the unit. On July 24, 2014, at least a thousand villagers, including several women, stormed the bottling unit, demanding its closure. The district administration immediately sprung into action and even ensured that three of the six borewells were closed.

 

 However, a few days later, they got permission from the ground water authority of the PWD to dig three new borewells in neighbouring Kumbakudi panchayat. “Using RTI, we have obtained enough information to prove that the factory has been constructed without obtaining adequate permission. The building itself has not got approval from the local planning authority but the proprietors have got fire licence and pollution clearance. It is obvious that a lot of palms have been greased.

 

“Unless something is done immediately, the damage will be irreparable,” says the Suriyur panchayat president.