Damaged sewers leading to contamination of wells | Nagpur News – Times of India

Nagpur: There has been an alarming rise in complaints of water contamination in wells across the city. From 2,900 calls to drain out contaminated water from wells in 2016-17, the Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) fire and emergency services department is cleaning almost 4,000 wells now every year.
NMC’s fire and emergency services department statistics come as a shocker and reveal how dangerous it is to drink or use well water for even domestic purposes. The major reason for contamination of well water is damaged sewerage networks across the city, said a senior official from NMC’s public engineering department.
In the last six years, firemen have dewatered over 18,000 private and public wells. For residents in several parts, leakages in sewer lines are a recurring woe, besides stagnant water that often seeps and mixes with well water. “The wells in Laxmi Nagar, Hanuman Nagar, Nehru Nagar and other zones are exposed to sewerage contamination,” said a senior officer from NMC’s fire department.
The fire department has two squads at Civil Lines and Lakadganj fire stations to attend to calls related to dewatering of wells. There is an increase in incidents of dirty water contaminating wells, the fire department officer said. According to him, the fire department is attending to as many as 10 calls per day to dewater well water.
The NMC needs to conduct quality checks of sewer lines as they have developed cracks at many places. The old city areas — where drainage lines pass close to wells — are more vulnerable to such contamination.
Many residents who use well water for bathing and household chores develop allergies and infections, admitted many corporators. But citizens allege that the department concerned hardly takes any steps to plug leakage in sewer lines.
According to a senior official of NMC’s health engineering department, well water is getting contaminated due to old and ruptured sewerage system in many localities. The official further informed that in such cases NMC provides free pumping of contaminated water from well before clearing the blockage and repairing leakages.
Even a study carried out by Neeri revealed that city’s well water is not suitable for consumption. Of the 666 wells, 50% of them have turned into garbage dumping yards. Only water from 30 wells is fit to be used for domestic purposes.