Dry tanks, wet eyes down south

CHANDIGARH: A municipal corporation that promised 24x7 running water to the residents from this summer now struggles to maintain even the routine supply to Sector 47, where taps go dry at 8.30am and complaints of low pressure abound.
Residents are worried because the harshest part of summer is yet to begin. They can foresee the water shortage becoming severer.Dry overhead tanks, erratic water supply at low pressure are in their daily experience and complaining to the municipal corporation has failed to fill their buckets. During a visit to the sector, a TOI team found that people had improvised to deal with the scarcity. Majority housing societies
had installed water tanks on the ground floor or pumps to lift water to the upper-floor taps.
It’s not this year that the problem has aggravated. It has been like that for a few years. The situation has worsened because the old water pipelines have developed serious leakages. Public raised this issue with the civic authorities many times and received empty assurances of help. Another summer, another round of crisis. People also blame injudicious use of water in spite of the penalty for wastage.
The residents of Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) flats have built a reserve tank. Because of low pressure of the supply, their overhead tanks don’t get filled. Sector-47 resident Bhupinder Kaur said: “Every day, the upper floor people go through the hardship of hauling water buckets from the ground floor to the overhead tanks.”