Thank God! After 5 days, Mangaluru city gets its water supply back

Mangalur, Aug 6: The coastal city of Mangaluru, which went without water for five consecutive days, finally got its water supply back on last evening following the successful repair on the on the broken 18MGD pipeline at Kannur in the city outskirts.

Full pumping of water from the dam to underground tanks at Padil and Bendoorwell was resumed on Wednesday afternoon, said Gururaj Maralihalli, Executive Engineer (water supply) at Mangaluru City Corporation. “We will start the flow of water to the distribution network from both the underground tanks from 10 p.m. on Wednesday. People will get water from Wednesday night onwards,” he said.

The city had to suffer five water-less monsoon days due to a “human-made damage” caused by dumping of debris, soil and land-filling along the main water supply lines. This incident also exposed the lack of preparation of the corporation and the district administration in preventing it.

According to the corporation, the pipelines developed cracks at Kannur due to dumping of debris and soil on top of pipelines.

Speaking to The Hindu , the in-charge Commissioner at the civic body and Deputy Commissioner (Administration) Gokuldas Nayak admitted that it was the responsibility of the corporation to monitor the pipelines and ensure that there was no activity damaging the pipelines, a public property.

Mr. Nayak said that mostly it was those who owned the land on both the sides of pipelines who filled up the marshy land.

“Who else it could be?” he said. But he was silent on identifying the guilty and filing a criminal case against them.

Mr. Nayak said now the corporation would have to identify the borders of land acquired by it for laying the pipelines and mark the boundaries. Encroachments along the pipelines would have to be removed.

To a question, he said a modern sensor system, like the one adopted for monitoring theft of fuel from fuel supply lines in different parts of the country, could be adopted to monitor theft of water along the pipelines between Thumbe and Padil. The corporation would have to work on it, he said.

Meanwhile, open wells and borewells in some parts of the city came to the rescue of people to meet the drinking water and other requirements.