Severe shortage forces Palda residents to consume ‘contaminated’ groundwater

Indore: Amid worsening water crisis in Indore, people are now reportedly ignoring stattory health warnings and consuming ‘contaminated water’, thanks to lack of municipal supply alternatives.At Palda Square near the Hanuman Temple, a municipal hand pump is marked with clear red lettering stating that the water is unfit for drinking. Despite the public health warning, long queues of residents continue to collect water from the source for both domestic chores and direct consumption.Locals said nearby private and govt borewells have completely dried up, leaving them with no choice, but to filter or boil the foul-smelling water before drinking.Students who are preparing for competitive examinations in rented accommodations said that they could not afford to purchase bottled water regularly due to rising living costs, making the contaminated water of the hand pump their only accessible water source.Indore municipal commissioner Kshitij Singhal said around 700 tankers have been roped in to distribute water across the city including in the Palda area. “We have written the warning at the borewells and tubewells water of which are unfit for human consumption,” he said adding people are requested to not to use such water for drinking and cooking.Expressing their difficulties due to water crisis Palda residents said they cannot depend on water tankers as it is difficult to get adequate water from them. They have to wait in long queues to collect water from the tankers leaving their other works. So, they were compelled to use water of the hand pump.In response to the escalating water crisis, IMC has started digging ponds and urging people to install the water harvesting system at roof of their houses to catch the rain and increase ground-water level. On Monday, the civic body took up strengthening and other works at Annapurna pond costing around Rs 1.50 crore.During the ground-breaking ceremony, state minister Tulsiram Silawat and mayor Pushyamitra Bhargava addressed the structural roots of the crisis.The mayor said that while Indore Municipal Corporation built 28 new overhead storage tanks over the past three years to expand the Narmada pipeline network, rapid population growth and consecutive seasons of low rain depleted the local water table, drying up thousands of public borewells.To mitigate future deficits, the civic administration has initiated desiltation and deep-boring conservation projects across 29 ponds in the city while mandating the installation of rooftop rainwater harvesting systems for residential properties.During the day, collector Shivam Verma and IMC commissioner Kshitij Singhal convened a joint emergency review meeting at Musakhedi. The administration has restructured its monitoring framework by assigning explicit field-level oversight responsibilities to all additional commissioners.