MYSURU: It is not a dry summer anymore for some villages in Mysuru district, where all these years the residents had to deal with acute drinking water problem.
From this year, thanks to a rural drinking water supply project, which has upgraded hand pumps to solar dual pumps, people in 25 vulnerable villages have been saved from summer blues.
The hand pumps in these villages used to go dry in summer.
Though the water was below 120 feet, people were not able to draw water because pumping was hard. The power crisis during summer worsened the situation. But now the automatic solar pumps have put an end to the crisis by lifting water from 200 feet.
Zilla Panchayat project engineer S Mutaza Ali said all these years they were flooded with complaints of drinking water crisis.
But this time there has been considerable decline in complaints, mainly from villages where solar pumps were installed.
He said `5 lakh was spent to fix each solar pump and attach a 5,000 litre capacity tank.
Now, water is pumped automatically and filled into the tank.
Hand pumps located in the middle of villages, close to schools were selected to fix the solar pumps.
In 2014-15, 10 solar pumps were sanctioned to Mysuru taluk and five each to T Narasipura, K R Nagar and H D Kote taluks.
In Mysuru taluk, Varuna, Gopalapura, Danagalli, Yelwala, Siddaramanahundi, Siddalingapura, Kadakola and others were selected.
After the success of the project, 15 more pumps have been sanctioned to Periyapatna and Hunsur taluks in the district.
Harsha M L of Genesis Industrial Services, which is implementing the project, said it aims at making villages self-reliant in drinking water.