CHENNAI:As Chennai faces one of worst water crises in the last few years, a village in the city’s periphery is waging a battle to save its ground water from the city’s private water tankers. Illalur, a tiny village a few kilometres away from Old Mahabalipuram Road near Thiruporur, has passed a resolution at its panchayat that farmers must not sell ground water from their wells and borewells to private water tanker operators.
The panchayat’s president V Saraswati has also issued notices to 21 of its residents, who were identified as selling the ground water. “These people are selling water just because it brings them quick money and some of them have become rich overnight. But they fail to see that it would affect the water resource of the village and we may not get water for drinking, let alone for farming,” says Sadasivam, a villager of Illalur.
For last several decades, Chennai, which is not self-reliant water needs, has depended on ground water from surrounding villages. This has created a lot of conflict between the city and the villages. While Metro Water board has been extracting ground water from the village in Kosathalaiyar-Araniar River basin since 1960s to meet Chennai’s demands, private players, who supply in water tankers and also packed water, have been extracting ground water from the village south of the city.
Since the lakes and tanks that were city’s water sources have dried up this year, the strain on these villages was high, as private players try to meet the demand by extracting the village’s ground water.
“The real danger is sea water intrusion, as our village is also located just a few kilometers from the coast. Presently, the ground water here is the best among surrounding villages, and tastes sweet. But if they keep extracting water indiscriminately, sea water would intrude and the ground water would become useless,” said M Karnan, a farmer in the village.
The fears of villagers are completely justified. Several villages in and around Ponneri, from where ground water has been extracted for several decades, have already met the same fate and people there are dependent on other water sources.The Illalur Panchayat has put up roadside notice boards as a warning to the villagers against selling of ground water. But the roads of the village, which were reduced to slush because of the frequent trips by the mammoth water tankers, bear witness that the village panchayat’s resolution continues to be flouted. The private farmers, who see the ground water as easy and huge money, refuse to bow to the pressures of the villagers.
“Some of them are with the police department. Whenever we block the private water tanker carrying the water, the police arrive and threaten us. So we have no choice but to withdraw the protest,” laments another villager, who prefered anonymity out of fear of those “influential villagers”.
As a final resort, the Illalur villagers are planning to approach the High Court to protect their water and livelihood. Sonalur, a nearby village, which had faced similar problems by indiscriminate extraction of ground water by private players, had managed to secure relief through the High Court earlier this year. “It’s going to be a difficult fight against the farmers selling water and also the private water industry. The courts seem to be our last resort. For the selfishness of a few individuals now, we don’t want our children travelling long distances to get drinking water,” says Sadasivam.