THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala Water Authority (KWA) has cleared the setting up of a new treatment plant for the rural water supply scheme serving the water-starved Karakulam panchayat.

The KWA Board at its meeting on September 29 sanctioned Rs.1 crore for the construction of the plant at Kummi. It will have a capacity to treat 2.5 million litres of water a day. The KWA has invited tenders for the scheme.

The 22 wards in Karakulam panchyat now get two million litres of water a day. From the intake well and pumping station at Kummi, the water is brought to the booster station at Enikkara before being pumped to the ground-level reservoir at Kallayam. Though this water is disinfected through chlorination, there is no provision for treatment of any sort. When the Karakulam scheme was set up, there was a filtering gallery at Kummi consisting of perforated pipes and layers of sand and stone.

Over the years, the gallery was damaged beyond repair. Moreover, the pumping and distribution system of this scheme became dilapidated and lost much of their efficiency.

The result was that though there was adequate water supply at the source of the scheme - the River Karamana - the panchayat still reels under acute shortage of water.

The two million litres of water filtered each day are distributed on a rota basis. One day there is water supply to areas in and around Vattapapra, the second day areas such as Enikkara and Mullasery would get water and on the third day there will be supply in areas in and around Mukkola.

Added to this is the fact that two million litres of water a day nowhere near meets the requirements of the panchayat that is rapidly getting urbanised. Some time ago, engineers of the KWA submitted a Rs.5-crore proposal to set up a treatment plant with a capacity of 5 mld at Kummi. It is in response to this proposal that the KWA has now sanctioned the setting up of a 2.5 mld plant there. Though the treatment plant will definitely improve the quality of water being supplied under the Karakulam scheme it will have next to no impact on the scarcity of water in the panchayat.

"Even if we get a 5-mld plant, we will still not be able to give round-the-clock supply to the panchayat. Moreover, we need to replace the pumping system and the distribution network at Karakulam," a KWA engineer at the Aruvikkara division said.

However, the KWA at present has no plans, and according to top engineers no money too, to go in for a major refurbishment of the scheme's distribution system.

This coupled with the fact that the KWA has sanctioned only a 2.5-mld treatment plant means that the panchayat's water woes will continue in the days to come.

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