Chennai: For nearly 10 years, the expanding Chengalpattu town and its residents situated on the outskirts of Chennai have been waging a lopsided battle against water scarcity.
Even though river Palar, which is one of the drinking water sources for local bodies in Chennai, flows through here, Chengalpattu residents have not been fortunate enough to reap the benefits of it, which was again not helped by the river going dry two decades earlier. Then, the monsoon of 2015 happened and Palar was brim for once, after a generation’s gap.
But, in under three months of that happening, water scarcity has reared its ugly head again in this rapidly urbanising town located off GST Road.
Residents in areas like Natham, Shastri Nagar, Gandhi Salai, Mettu street, Jeevanandam street in wards one, seven, eight, nine, 10 and 21 complained that piped water supply is restricted to once every 10 days.
What has inconvenienced residents even more is that the municipality doubled the drinking water tax from Rs 30 to Rs 60 per month. “Even the Chennai corporation doesn’t tax so much for water. We are paying Rs 720 a year and for what?” asked R. Vedagiri, a resident of Mettu Street.
“When we left Chennai and moved to Chengalpattu, we did so thinking we won’t be worrying about water as it was close to Palar river. Only the opposite of that has happened and we regret that we chose to move down here,” he added.
Natham resident Gunasekaran and R. Kasthuri of Jeevanandam street pointed out that the municipality officials always had stock excuses for when there was no water supply. “It is always pipeline burst or motor repair. There will be water supply for two days, then nothing for two weeks. Every time they tell us there was a pipe burst, we wonder if they are really changing anything or just writing cheques for repair works that don’t happen,” remarked Gunasekaran.
“Any candidate who comes campaigning to Chengalpattu will have to answer what they will do about the water problem because we have been suffering for too long,” said Kasthuri.
The burgeoning issue reached a head during February when around 500 residents gheraoed the municipality office seeking explanation, especially after drinking water supplied to residents was found mixed with sewage.
Though officials pacified the agitating public, the issue remains unresolved. When asked to comment, municipality engineer R. Ganesan told DC that though the monsoon helped increase ground water levels substantially, the local body was struggling to provide adequate drinking water because of a dated supply network.
“The water scheme still operational in Chengalpattu was drawn 60 years earlier, when the population was around 15,000. There are five times as many people now. The pipes and motors are all completely damaged. Every time we replace a damaged portion with a new pipe, another bit gets damaged. This is the fact but the residents think we are lying,” he said.
“We have outlined a Rs 26 crore project to completely revamp the drinking water supply network in Chengalpattu but we do not have the funds to execute it. There are no sumps, tanks or other storage equipment either. There is a need to go for total overhaul,” Ganesan added.
However, municipality officials expressed inability to rein in illegal sand mining on Palar river bed, which they attributed as one of the key reasons for damaged pipelines. “Bullock Cart sand miners’ movement breaks most of our pipelines,” an official said.
