A 15-year old boy, Suraj Tirkey, running a hand pump to extract underground water in Kanke’s Hathia Gonda area, just a stone’s throw away from the water treatment plant situated on a hillock, speaks of the ground reality of water supply, quality and quantity supplied in the summer which is getting harsher by day.
Hundreds of residents living around the water treatment plant maintained by Drinking Water Sanitation Department (DWSD) don’t think that the water is suitable for drinking or using it for cooking purpose. Irregular water supply aggravates their problem however there is not much they can do to improve the situation. Water requirement in summer usually peaks up but poor quality and fear of water borne disease discourages people from using the water supplied.
“Water comes twice in a day and it is not fit for drinking,” said the 15-year old boy while he was helping women to fill pitcher.
However, thanks to soaring temperature, poor quality and inadequate supply has become a problem for the department to ensure continuous and clean drinking water to households besides making filtration a tough job even for a seasoned official in the job.
With going above water treatment plants have to deal with several unwanted matter that gets dissolved in the water due decomposition of algae at high temperature but the department confesses to increase the amount of material used for water treatment.
“Decomposition of algae starts if the temperature rises above 30 degrees that leads to formation of gases and other materials but we change input materials accordingly,” said a chemist at the plant.
Nonetheless, the water that reaches to the last person in the supply chain doesn’t encourage the end user to use it for cooking purpose. Even as the water appears clear it leaves water tanks installed at houses with a thick layer of yellow silt with abominable stench. Falling water level in summer makes one dependent on the water supplied by DWSD.
“I have installed two water tanks one for storing water that is supplied by the department and other for storing the underground water. You can see the difference with visible eyes,” said Ashutosh Prasad, a resident of Dhawan Nagar in Kanke Road. Water irrespective of its quality is considered vital for sustenance however uneven electricity supply in last two days has affected water supply by 30 per cent. A small size water treatment plant which is usually enough for supplying around 40-lakh gallons of treated water is pushed behind by five minutes for every 10 minutes of power cut.
“Power cut forces us switch off processes at different levels which is restarted when power is restored so it is obvious that it will affect water supply,” said SDO of DWSD.