Parched town still awaits piped water

Beed belongs to the Marathwada region, which has witnessed a high rainfall deficiency this summer. The district received just 157.8 mm rainfall as of August 9, the lowest in Marathwada.

Parli town in Maharashtra’s Beed district has been deprived of normal water supply for the past 100 days as the region’s main water source, Wan Dam in Nagapur, has dried up completely.

Parli has been getting only tanker water for the last 100 days. (Mahadev Shinde/HT)

Beed belongs to the Marathwada region, which has witnessed a high rainfall deficiency this summer. The district received just 157.8 mm rainfall as of August 9, the lowest in Marathwada.

The rainfall deficiency in Beed rose to 39% as of August 7 even as the India Meteorological Department (IMD) pegged Beed’s average annual rainfall at 666 mm.

While Sangli, Karad, Kolhapur and Pune in western Maharashtra are in the grip of devastating floods, a large part of Marathwada has been facing a drought-like situation for more than six months now.

With a population of 126,000, Parli requires about 6.5 MLD (million litres per day) of water. The Parli Vaijinath Municipal Council draws water from Wan Dam in Nagapur village.

While the civic body claims that usually it supplies 50 litres per day per person, this year it started sending water tankers on a daily basis. There is no information on amount of water being supplied per person now, as the supply is irregular.

Dilip Rode, head of Parli’s civic water supply department, said, “This year there is no storage in the dam due to failure of the monsoon season. There is no water in the Wan dam or the Bandumi dam and hence we are supplying water through 41 water tankers. We hope the region will get good rainfall and the situation will normalise.”

The police said water-related conflicts were on the rise as well. “People tend to break into fights the moment a water tanker arrives in an area,” said Devidas Shelke, an inspector of the Parli City Police Station. He said in the last two months, 12 such reports had been registered in the city police station.

Three months ago, the residents of Parli had staged a hunger strike in front of the municipal council.

Vyankatesh Shinde, 32, a resident, said, his locality had not received municipal water supply for the past 110 days.

“All the taps in the city have been running dry for the last three-and-half months. The civic tankers are not enough to meet our needs,” he said, adding that he spends almost Rs 3,000 per month to purchase water from private water tankers.

Yamunabai Sontakke, (44), a resident of Krishna Nagar, said, he spends the entire day searching for water. “We have to travel several kilometres to fetch water from private borewells, ” she said.

Residents from areas such as Malikpura, Ganeshpar, Swabhiman Nagar and Krishna Nagar are heavily dependent on private tankers. A small tanker of 3,500-4,000 litres costs about Rs 500 while a large one with 10,000-litre capacity costs up to Rs 1000.

The Ground Water Survey and Development Agency (GSDA) reported that by March-end, Parli had groundwater depletion of more than 3 metres.