City wells go dry as water table plunges down

According to the data collected by the Rain Centre, around nine out of 24 wells under the watch has gone completely dry in March. The monitoring wells have gone dry in Anna Nagar AI Block, Choolaimedu, Parthasarathy temple, Vadapalani, Madhava Perumal temple in Mylapore, Ashok Nagar, Nesapakkam, Cancer Institute and Sastri Nagar in Adyar.

“The places where wells have gone dry indicate the dependence on groundwater sources owing to the dip in the piped water supply,” said Shekhar Raghavan of the Rain Centre. Last year, around this time the city had only two dry wells and water was available at five metres of depth. It was identified that wells located at Mylapore went dry in 2018.

The areas including Chepauk (11.75 m), Valasaravakkam (9.05 m) and Ceebros Gardens (9.2 m) water level have gone below nine metres this year. When compared to water level in February, the sources reduced on an average of 0.3 metres in a span of one month. The water level at West Mambalam was 7.6 metres against the 7.9 metres in February. Whereas, water was available in T Nagar at 7.8 metres against the March level of 7.6 metres.

Sathyamoorthy of the Sri Karthik borewells said that the number of orders for borewells received during this summer has gone up. “This year, we are receiving around 50 per cent of our orders related to drilling of new borewells. The rest comprises of deepening existing borewells including Pallavaram and Chromepet this summer.

During the off- summer season, the agencies receive around 10-15 orders while the numbers peak during the summer. This time, the number of orders has touched more than 150 per cent.”