Chennai: Many house owners in Tondiarpet are in distress as their tenants have started vacating because of the groundwater pollution by seepage from the oil pipelines of BPCL (Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited). The problem had popped up in July and remains unsolved.
A group of residents has sent a notice to BPCL complaining that their borewell water continues to be oil-contaminated even after five months of digging/pumping by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) to stop seepage from the BPCL pipelines.
The BPCL-TNPCB teams have pumped out significant quantities of oil in residential areas in Tondiarpet, such as Varadharaja Perumal Koil Street and TH road. Still, more than 1000 families in this neighbourhood are in distress, though BPCL is supplying them with drinking water.
Only the affluent can buy water for other needs while the others are forced to use the oil-contaminated water for washing. K.S.Jayaraman, 65, owns two houses and both are lying vacant for the last three months.
“My tenants had vacated due to water-related health issues. And I am unable to get a tenant because the news about this oil-leak has spread far and wide. Nobody wants to rent a house here”, he said, adding that some house owners were unable to even get buyers for their properties put on sale.
Another resident K Umachandran, 51, said he couldn’t invite his friends and relatives “because of this oil factor”. He said his neighbour borrowed two barrels of water from him last week to entertain his sudden guests.
When contacted, a senior TNPCB official said the BPCL had written to the Union environment and forests ministry last week promising that it would remove its three underground pipelines that ran through Tondiarpet and were polluting the region by oil seepage.
“But then, even if they remove the pipes today, it would still take a decade and more for those residents to access clean groundwater. It’s a hopeless situation there”, he said.
