THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: On the fourth consecutive day, the KWA pipe at the city zoo had run dry. Fortunately, the animals have not been left thirsty, as the zoo staff have been carting water from a pipeline near the back gate to the enclosure.
Most of Tuesday morning went into lugging huge vessels of water from the back gate, for the zoo keepers, who have their hands full even otherwise. KWA pipeline supplies drinking water to nearly all animal enclosures, except that of the hippo and the crocodile. The water in these enclosures comes from the pond inside the zoo. An earlier laboratory test had revealed presence of bacteria in the pond, and was deemed unsuitable for drinking purposes.
KWA officials had adjusted the valves of the tank at the Observatory which supplies water to the zoo on Monday, thinking that this would solve the issue. Their first surmise was that the new connections from a JICA tank at the Observatory, which had gone live recently, had started to draw more water. To solve this, the inflow to the tank was increased. This did rectify the water shortage in Lenin Nagar and all other areas where water is supplied from the Observatory pipeline. However, the problem at the zoo as well as Nandavanam area has not been solved. A KWA official said, “Many of these tanks are connected to each other. We now think it could be a dip in water level in the Peroorkada tank which caused the problem.”
KWA has not ruled out a possibility of a rupture in the zoo pipelines, though there are no visible signs of the same. According to the KWA official, there are 12 connections inside the zoo. A leak in one could cause water to be completely stalled.
A pipeline at the zoo located near the back gate continues to supply water to the enclosures in the low-lying areas. Since this is an independent connection, the zoo staff has no other way but to ferry water from this pipeline. KWA was still figuring out what went wrong, on Tuesday.