Contaminated drinking water supplied to homes in Nellore

Nellore: Believe it or not, the people of Nellore are afraid of using drinking water being supplied by the civic body due to its contamination.

They say colour of water is yellow and somewhat green and emanating bad odour. Residents are preferring to drink packaged water being supplied by private drinking water agencies. Assurances of making Nellore into a smart city has been a distant dream.

Highlights:

• Water contamination has been a common phenomenon and no action is being taken by the officials for quality checking
• The private drinking water companies are taking advantage and supplying the packaged water in and around the city without certification from BIS
• 80 million litres of water is being supplied by civic body to city residents daily

The per capita supply of water has been 106 litres against the prescribed norm of 135 and this was also not being fulfilled in many areas.

More than 80 million liters of water in 54 municipal divisions is being supplied to the people through tap system and many places are still receiving polluted water.

Around 39 water tankers in the city are supplying water from 14 wells in Penna River, Summer Storage, Bujjamma Cheruvu, and many other sources daily. But, no testing facility is available for checking quality of water where more than Rs 20 crore is being spent on drinking water.

Major source of water is the storage tank located at the old municipal office close to Penna River which was constructed 52 years ago and is still being used for water storage purpose where top of the tank has been in dilapidated condition. “Water tanks should be cleaned once in 15 days. But, the officials are not following the schedule.

So, there is no clarity on the hygienic conditions of the tank to the lower rung staff,” admitted a retired official from the Corporation. The civic body is negligent to rectify the issue despite rise in waterborne diseases.

There are around 35,000 house service connections and number of these connections is seen to be small fraction when compared to the total number of households with a total length of water distribution network above 450 km and somewhere drainage is mixing with drinking water due to pipelines leakage giving scope for supply of contaminated water.

As a result, more than 150 private drinking water companies came up in and around the city even without obtaining licences without ISI tag. In fact, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) gives permission for private drinking water companies
after certifying their quality.

Now, people are forced to buy water from the uncertified companies that supply water without any quality check. Even, the civic body which has a strong system is also not following the quality guidelines set by the BIS.

“We are facing trouble with drinking water as the municipal water is not fit for drinking purpose and we are forced to rely on the packaged bottles from private water companies. They are also not supplying pure water as there has been no testing mechanism in city,” said A Neeraja from the Police Colony.

By P V Prasad