Scarcity, yet half of Dharamsala water flows down drains

Raghav Guleria

Dharamsala, April 18

The water distribution pipes in Dharamsala, the Smart City in the making, utilise just half the water that comes through the main pipeline, with half getting wasted through leaking pipes. The distribution panels — locally called ‘baansuri’ — comprise haphazardly laid pipes, lying one over the other.

At places, even the fitters and owners are unaware which pipes bring water to different houses. Huge funds used for the Smart City project and the much talked-about ‘Jal Jeevan Mission’ —running into several hundred crores — have failed to improve these obsolete channels of water distribution.

At lower Ramnagar area of the town, there is a distribution channel near the Ek Jot Colony, catering to around 150 households. The number of pipes laid haphazardly has exponentially increased over the years.

At 11 am every day, when water is released into the distribution network, the dry drain underneath gets filled with gushing water. The leakage, enough to supply at least 50 household, gets unnoticed. Ramesh Dadhwal, a resident of Ramnagar, said, “Water is scarce but we become affluent in wasting it. The fitters on duty say that the department has no budget to replace the broken or the leaking water connection pipes. And thus, everybody is a mute spectator to the water flowing into the drain.”

The quantity of water wasted is tremendous and needs to be saved on priority, opines another resident of the colony. People have no option but to try to get a connection from a water channel with better water pressure. For this, there is a mad race to reach higher and closer to the source of water. It aggravates the chaos and results in more tangled water pipelines.

Vimal Katoch, Executive Engineer (XEN), who has recently taken charge, says things must change.

According to him, the water requirement in the town has exceeded beyond the levels anticipated by the department. He says he would the Municipal Corporation Commissioner, who also heads the Smart City Project, to seek funds to plug the leakages. He has assured the residents that the system would see an improvement in the next seven days.