Keonjhar: The drinking water supply to households in Keonjhar town has been severely disrupted after the reservoir created by Badaghagara dam on Machhakandana river in Keonjhar district dried up this summer season.
As a result, residents of the town have been going through horrid times as taps in their homes have stopped supplying drinking water. This has sparked resentment and anger among the town’s inhabitants. This has come at a time when extreme heatwave and humidity this summer season has made life intolerable for people.
The situation might go out of hands if the heatwave sees no let-up and the area does not get rainfall in the coming days.
Badaghagara dam was built on the Machhakandana river in pre-Independence period when the former royals used to rule the district.
After construction of the dam, river water was lifted from the reservoir and supplied as drinking water to the residents in Keonjhar town. However, with passage of time, the water retaining capacity of the reservoir has declined. It went completely dry this year leading to disruption in drinking water supply to the town households.
Residents have failed to meet their drinking water needs with a minimum water supply in their homes.
The problem is not for a day or two but has been persisting for a long period due sharp decline in water level in the dam’s reservoir. The problem is mostly acute from Ward No. 1 to Ward No. 7. The residents in these wards are passing through a difficult time due to lack of drinking water supply to their households and are now dependent on the tube wells in the area. However, getting even a bucket of water from the tube well is not an easy task as there is always a long queue of people waiting for their turn to fill water.
Furthermore, most of the tube wells have become defunct in majority of the areas while the ponds present in most of the wards have either dried up or lying in unusable condition due to renovation works.
The authorities of Keonjhar Municipality and the Public Health department officials have started supplying drinking water through tankers but the move has failed to alleviate the problems of the residents. This is because people have to wait in a long queue to take a bucket of water from the tanker. A resident Duryodhan Nayak of Ward No. 7 said that he had never seen the river and the reservoir go completely dry in his life time.
When contacted, Executive Engineer Narad Rath of Public Health and Engineering department said the department has been using a diesel motor pump to lift water from the reservoir after water level declined one and half months back due to lack of rainfall. He warned that it will be impossible to supply water to the households in coming days if the area does not experience rainfall soon.
PNN