The Hindu : Trade, industry support water supply scheme

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 09, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala

Trade, industry support water supply scheme

By K. Venkiteswaran

KOCHI JAN. 8. Even as conflicting signals are emanating from the authorities who should be in the know of things as far as the Kochi industrial water supply scheme is concerned, the trade and industry here are for the project.

The trade and industry feel that the Cochin Industrial Water Supply Scheme is of vital importance as it can spell the difference between growth and stagnation as far as Kochi and its suburbs are concerned.

According to the president of the Cochin Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Venkat Naidoo, the scheme should be presented during the Global Investors Meet (GIM).

He pointed out that Kochi was forever in the grip of an acute water shortage crisis and to date, no one had been able to come up with a lasting solution to this chronic problem. The Kerala Water Authority supplies only 225 Mld of water to Kochi as against a requirement of 290 Mld. The demand-supply gap here is 65 Mld. Projections for 2005 and 2010 show that the total requirements are 385 Mld and 466 Mld respectively. The KWA supply being 225, the demand supply gap is of the order of 160 and 241 Mld respectively, it is pointed out.

The CWIS project, on completion, envisages a total capacity of 200 Mld and supply of water to the hospitals, hotels, restaurants, schools/colleges, the Kochi port, Vallarpadam terminal, industrial estates and parks, the seafood industry in the Aroor belt and other commercial establishments in and around Kochi.

Importantly, the project will also make available water to western Kochi, especially Vypeen area, that has been facing severe shortage in recent years. This lack of water has led to extensive and unscientific tapping of ground water and thereby its depletion, which has resulted in increased salinity recently.

The president of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Bharat Khona, pointed out that domestic supply too would get a boost by the addition of ten per cent of the capacity to the existing supply by the KWA.

The CIWS capacity of 240 Mld is 2.77 cusecs. Hence the average drawal will be only 2.5 per cent of the flow in the river, water that would normally flow into the sea, it is said. The seafood industry too stands to benefit immensely from the CIWS project, says Abraham J. Tharakan, president, Seafood Exporters Association of India.

This multi-crore industry segment, one of the largest revenue earners as far as Kerala is concerned, at present has 81 units operating in the Aroor-Chandiroor belt. Of these, 42 units are EU-approved units. It is mandatory for this industry to have potable quality water for all its operations.

Today, this water is being sourced through the KWA, by tapping ground water and from other sources. The cost involved in ensuring the availability and supply of this water is phenomenal, not to mention the ill-effects of the over-dependence on ground water sources.

A major 'cost factor' can be brought down and competitiveness improved once the CIWS project is implemented, especially since one outlet of this project is to be in the Aroor-Chandiroor area.

Again, this project is to be implemented on a BOT basis with private sector participation together with 11 per cent equity by Government agencies in the proposed joint venture.

Besides providing additional revenue to the Government, the project will also result in additional employment opportunities.

Further more, the proposal to construct permanent regulators to control the salinity of the water will lead to a saving of nearly 1200 Mld of water every day, water that is normally let out to ensure salinity control. This water can be diverted to better use. The construction of permanent bunds will also do awy with the present system of constructing temporary bunds ananually and the costs involved therein.

The CIWS project also seeks to provide a concrete liner for the PVIP Canal, wherein a lot of water is lost in transit, construct check dams in upstream points, construct regulators to check salinity intrusion in the summer months, adopt conservation measures like the dredging of reservoirs to increase storage capacity, restrict illicit sand mining, etc.

The Cochin Industrial Water Supply project aims to meet the overall water requirement of Kochi in the coming years functioning independently of the Kerala Water Authority schemes.

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