Noida: Ranney wells not functional, residents face water woes

NOIDA: The Noida authority has started the process to hire an agency for repairing defunct Ranney wells and tube well. The move comes after residents complained

NOIDA: The Noida authority has started the process to hire an agency for repairing defunct Ranney wells and tube well. The move comes after residents complained of poor water supply for the last one month.

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Officials said complaints have been coming in from October 15, when cleaning of Upper Ganga canal, which supplies drinking water, began.

The cleaning will continue till November 15. It is an annual exercise due to which residents witness water woes annually. Officials said residents have requested that the Ranney well and tube well should be repaired on time so that they do not face water woes during the festive season.

According to the authority’s water department, five out of the 11 Ranney wells they have are completely shut and 126 tubewells out of 431 are not functional due to technical issues. As a result, the supply of groundwater also gets affected during the festive season.

“We are preparing estimates so that we can invite tenders from interested agencies, which can repair the non-functional Ranney wells and tubewells,” said RP Singh, project engineer of the Noida authority.

Residents, meanwhile, said the authority should have repaired these well in advance. There are a total of 11 Renney wells in Noida. Each Ranney well extracts ground water and stores it for supply to households. One Ranney well supplies 18 million liters per day (MLD) water to the city.

“We have been demanding from the Noida authority that the water supply should not get affected during the festive season. But the water department did not repair these earlier. As a result we are staring at a water crisis. The water supply is not only erratic but muddy water is being supplied in many areas,” said AN Dhawan, legal advisor to the federation of Noida residents’ welfare association (FONRWAs), an umbrella body of city RWAs.