TIRUNELVELI: In Ayankulam village of Thisayanvilai taluk, the residents speak of a legendary well that failed to fill despite five days of strong water inflow from Nambiyaru canal. On Thursday, a team from IIT, Madras visited the mysterious well to dig out the truth behind these tales.
Earlier, Collector V Vishnu, District Monitoring Officer Apoorva, the assembly speaker M Appavu and thousands of villagers from across the district had rushed to Ayankulam to get a closer look at the farm well that swallows water indefinitely.
After Collector Vishnu extended an invitation to the IIT team, they arrived here to study the workings of the well and the reason for its arid state. “Geographically it is called karst formation (a landscape where the bedrock dissolves and caves-in to form caves, sinking streams, springs, sinkholes and other cavity-like features). There may be an interconnection of underground channels inside the well. It will be very useful for us if the IIT team is able to map the entire network,” said Vishnu.
The Collector said there is a belief among the local farmers that all the farm wells located within a 30 km radius of Ayankulam will get recharged if water flows into this particular farm well. “That may be true or an exaggeration. But we can put in place more recharge structures aligning this farm well, using the workers of MGNREGA scheme if the IIT study demonstrates the groundwater recharge by this well on a sizeable area. The team is also checking the satellite data of this area,” said Vishnu.
Speaking to TNIE, the farmers of Ayankulam claim that this well might just be a wishing well in disguise. “The well did not fill up even after 45 days of water flow into it, a few years ago,” claimed the farmers.