Gated communities face water shortage in times of plenty

Major lakes supplying drinking water to the city, which were bone dry a few months ago, now have storage of around 5 TMC. Despite the fast brimming lakes and the Metro Water increasing supply to 650 million litres per day (MLD), residents of several areas and gated communities do not care about the lake levels as they are still depending on tanker lorries and groundwater.

“We do not see any step being taken by the government to provide piped water for residents of areas along Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR). They claim that the pipelines are installed but the work is incomplete. We still depend on private tanker lorries and groundwater,” Harsha Koda, Secretary of Sabari Terrace and coordinator of Federation of OMR Resident Associations (FOMRRA), said.

He added that around 100 apartment complexes are part of the federation and those apartments house around one lakh families. Even though the residents are depending on tanker water supply, one apartment can only book one Metrowater tanker lorry at a time, which is insufficient for the families.

“Due to this, we fall back on private tanker lorries as they meet our demand. We now pay Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,500 for 12,000 litres of water. Sometimes, the price may escalate to Rs 2,000,” Harsha Koda pointed out.

However, the residents had learnt some lessons during the peak summer when they could not get water even from private tankers despite they were ready to pay higher charges. Apartments on OMR have now taken the rainwater harvesting seriously and around 20 apartments are doing harvesting sincerely. Presently, these apartments are saving around 40 lakh litres of water perevery hour of rain.

He also raised suspicion that the government is deliberately refusing to supply drinking water on OMR to earn revenue through lorry bookings. Metro Water supplies one kilolitre of water at a cost of Rs 80 to Rs 100.

The failure of Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (Metro Water) is not constrained to the areas that were appended with the Chennai Corporation. Even the city’s major affluent locality like Adyar is also still waiting for proper Metro Water supply.

“We have not been receiving proper supply for several years. Our locality is served by Nemmeli desalination plant and the supply is much less than the demand. As the water supplied by the Metro Water is insufficient, most of the residents are depending on groundwater,” C Narasimhan, secretary of Federation of Adyar Resident’s Associations(FEDERA), said.

One of the reasons for insufficient water supply is the quantity of water loss due to faulty pipelines and low water pressure in tail-end areas. After several years of demand, the Metro Water proposed to repair the pipelines in the city to maintain uniform pressure, only a few months ago.

On the other hand, private lorry owners claim that orders for water have come down after the rains. “Each lorry owner was receiving around 50 orders per day during the water crisis. Now, we are getting only five orders,” Ramesh, a tanker lorry owner said.

When contacted, a Metrowater official ruled out the possibility of increasing the quantity of water supplied to the city and said that the available water would last till next October if the Metro Water continues to maintain650 MLD supply.

The city will require one TMC of water every month in case the water manager increases the water supply to 850 MLD. “Our lakes have around five TMC as of now. We have another three TMC by means of desalination plants and Veeranam lake. If we supply 650 MLD, 0.75 TMC is sufficient for one month of city’s water need, including evaporation loss,” the official said.