What we get is contaminated water, say Thoraipakkam residents
Unsafe for consumption: Samples of contaminated water drawn from well at a house in Sai Nagar in Thoraipakkam. Dumping of garbage in the heart of the Pallikaranai Marshland (Perungudi Dumping Yard in official parlance) and letting out of untreated sewage from different sources into the Buckingham Canal have resulted in an irreversible damage to the quality of sub-surface water in residential localities of the fast developing Thoraipakkam and Perungudi. On a visit to nearly half-a-dozen localities in Thoraipakkam on Monday, presspersons found that water drawn from domestic and deep borewells in Thoraipakkam was orange in colour and accompanied by a pungent, foul smell. Environmentalists fear that the problem is fast heading towards an unprecedented catastrophe in this part of Chennai. Residents complained that quality of water drawn from wells in Sai Nagar, Selva Ganapathy Avenue and Saravanan Nagar, among other adjoining localities, was consistently deteriorating over the past few years. Of late, the residents were forced to depend on water drawn from wells for washing clothes and cleaning utensils. Office-bearers of civic groups in Thoraipakkam attributed the problem to the dumping of garbage and the letting out of raw sewage. Residential areas in Okkiyam Thoraipakkam village panchayat and Perungudi town panchayat were the worst affected, said Periasamy, President, Sai Nagar Residents Welfare Association. At least, a few thousand wells in the areas were contaminated, a few residents of Sai Nagar said. They said while the affluent sections could afford expensive water purifying equipment, the poor were left with little option but to use the contaminated water for household purposes. In the absence of a complete, safe and protected drinking water supply scheme, even economically weaker sections have to purchase bottled water. Owing to the dumping of garbage, leachates seeped into the sub-surface and entered recharge channels through which groundwater entered the domestic and deep borewells. Leachate was caused by the percolation of waste from garbage dumped on landfill sites, said N.Srinivasan, environmentalist. The problem was not restricted to Perungudi or Thoraipakkam, but to far-off places, including Muttukadu, through which the Buckingham Canal meandered . Mr. Srinivasan said a study revealed that fishermen were deprived of their normal catch of fish as a large number of fishes died owing to the sewage content in the Kovalam creek. Mr. Periasamy said the laying of the Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam Radial Road had only made it easier for rural and urban local bodies along Rajiv Gandhi Salai (formerly Old Mamallapuram Road) and East Coast Road to dump solid waste on the fringes of the marshland. Putting an end to dumping and burning of garbage and ensuring the discharge of only completely treated sewage might, to a large extent, help reverse the trend, he added.