Tamil Nadu

Three years’ wait brings no water; pipes ‘rust in peace’

DHARAPURAM: Sadayampalayam, Nandavanapalayam, Suriyanallur, Kokkampalayam and nearly a dozen other panchayats near here have a lot of identical monuments.

These tombstones like structures dot the landscape of these villages, some of which fall under the neighbouring Kundadam Union.

Several pipes rise from the ground about a foot and come through to the other side of these structures through a hole.

These are in fact support structures for the pipes, which are supposed to deliver Cauvery water. The story of the pipe and Cauvery water can be best conveyed if these structures had RIP scrawled on them. RIP for the uninitiated is ‘rest in peace’.

For, nearly three years after the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD Board) laid the pipes to deliver Cauvery water, the water was delivered only for a mere three days. Now it lies barren, like grotesque tombs.

“Ever since the scheme was completed in 2004, we had had water only for about three days.

For the rest of that year and successive years, we had used the pipes for everything else other than fetching water,” complains T. Karuppan, a resident of Singaripalayam hamlet in Sadayampalayam Panchayat.

Conceived in 2003-04 for about Rs. 300 crore, TWAD Board was to supply water from the Cauvery Combined Drinking Water Scheme’s stage three to 24 panchayats by drawing the water near Kodumudi.

The Board’s target was to pump around eight lakh litres a day from Kodumudi and take it through seven pumping stations to Kundadam. But the intended aim has not been met.

“Many of the targeted areas have not had water, despite the Government spending such a huge amount,” regrets P. Raghupathy, Dharapuram town secretary of the Communist Party of India.

He alleges that repeated complaints to the TWAD Board have evoked only the standard reply that the supply will be ensured in a few days’ time.

“But many such few days have passed and now the few days are a few years,” he regrets.

TWAD Board officials, however, lay the blame on the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board.

The scheme depends on 23 hours of electricity a day for the pumped water to reach tail end areas. And, that has not happened.

The water supply area from Kodumudi to Kundadam falls under two or three TNEB divisions, each of which has a different shutdown schedule, thus affecting the pumping, the TWAD Board officials say in their defence. But when asked about the absence of water continuously for three years, they evade a direct answer.

“Only when there is continuous flow will we be able to check the supply to tail end areas and that has not happened,” they maintain. At the villages, though, the residents are not ready to buy the answer.

They want water and not answers, says Mr. Raghupathy.

Meanwhile the ‘tombs’ remain as a morbid remainder of a promise unfulfilled.

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