KOCHI: Seven months after the commissioning of the first phase of the JNNURM- funded Maradu drinking water project, the parched areas in west Kochi and nearby panchayats are yet to get additional water from the new treatment plant. Worse, they continue to depend on archaic, broken and an unscientifically planned pipeline network. Though the Kerala Water Authority started replacing and repairing the old pipelines months before the commissioning of the project, the work is not over. KWA is yet to get the government’s sanction for road cutting to start pipe-laying works along two major stretches from Cochin Shipyard to Thevara and from Thoppumpady to Karuvelipady. But pipeline-laying along the Mattancherry Bridge is complete.
The total capacity of the Rs 252 cr project, which is expected to benefit more than 2.5 lakh people, is 100 MLD water. The project areas are Kochi Corporation, Maradu municipality, Kumbalam, Kumbalanghi and Chellanam panchayats. The Maradu project which began in 2008 will ease the dependence on KWA’s Aluva pump house, the single drinking water source of greater Kochi, because water will be taken from Muvattupuzha River. Though KWA claims it supplies nearly 50 MLD to the project areas, the Authority is clueless about the huge quantity of water being lost through leakage in supply lines.
While the total requirement of west Kochi areas is nearly 45 MLD, the KWA can supply only 25 to 30 MLD now. Corporation town planning committee chairperson Shainy Mathew who represents Fort Kochi division where drinking water scarcity has been a perennial problem told DC that people’s representatives in west Kochi area have to bear the brunt of the slow pace of pipe-relaying works. “Though KWA officials claim the pipe relaying works will be completed soon, the councillors or corporation officials have not been informed of the actual status of works,” she said. Water supply from the Aluva pump house to the city areas can be augmented once the entire west Kochi areas and big consumers like Cochin Port and Naval Base are completely dependent on the Maradu plant.
