VELLORE: Hundreds of residents living along Gangai Amman Koil Street in Otteri are affected as a 500-metre stretch of their street often floods due to water leaking from underground drinking water pipes. Residents said that water leaks from two underground pipes on their street—one from Otteri and the other from the Cauvery Combined Water Scheme—have been a problem for two years.
Speaking to TNIE, a resident, T Loganayaki, said, “As there is only a mud road here, it gets slushy whenever water leaks from underground, and it becomes difficult to walk.”
Residents said that there is water leakage whenever the civic body supplies water, which usually happens at an interval of five to eight days. Another resident, K Pooja, reported that the taps near their houses also flow with polluted drinking water. "The water has a foul smell, is yellow-coloured and contains sand as well," she said. "We believe the drainage water from the underground drainage system is also mixing with the drinking water,” she added.
Residents also claim that there are many mosquitoes and that the state of the road forces them to stay inside their homes because the drinking water tainted with sewage gets stranded in the streets. One of the residents, S Kaveri, also petitioned Vellore District Collector V R Subbulaxmi last Monday on this issue. In the petition, S Kaveri mentioned that she got dengue due to the presence of mosquitoes breeding in the stagnant dirty water.
S Vijaya, another resident, pointed to a different civic issue. She stated that the burning of unsegregated garbage near their houses causes them to wheeze due to the fumes. Efforts to reach the corporation official in charge of the area remain unsuccessful.