Verna's water woes

Verna, a watery graveyard?

It has come full circle. Mauvin Godinho’s idea of an Electronic Estate at Verna, since it was started has been weathering storm after storm on the surface. Down below in nature’s underground there is another battle being fought, this one to protect scarce groundwater resources. And though there is a so-called Water Resources Department (WRD) in Goa, it is always only concerned citizens who appear to be concerned. The people that investigated the depleting groundwater resources in the Verna plateau (Report of the committee constituted to study water resources management in the Verna Industrial Estate), among them, the Voice of Villagers/Nagao, Verna, came up with this. From among the 326 industrial units inspected by the team, it was observed that 192 borewells including two open wells had been sunk. That’s a whole lot of wells, while the rest of Goa thirsts for water.

Water plateaued?

There’s no saying how much water these 194 wells spout because the industrialists are as sensitive as your government is secretive, but it appears that it works out to 8,470 cu. mt annually or 23.20 cu. mt per day. At least this is what was officially reported to the WRD. In case you didn’t know, a normal sized water tanker that you must hire, because the PWD isn’t so spirited about digging borewells for your sake, carries 12 cu. mt or 12,000 litres of water. Keep this figure in mind as you read on. Seventeen industries dug two or more borewells. Thirteen more were seen around the huge estate, while the PWD dug another seven exclusively for the industrial units. Strange but true --the WRD sunk eight borewells to evaluate the groundwater table. Talk about throwing good money after bad. Of course, the WRD hasn’t a clue about the long term behaviour of the groundwater table. It wants you to check with them after three years because the test wells have just been dug. But time, just like water, is what the lower lying villages don’t have. But the fact of the matter is some borewells have been dug to a depth of 130 mt, others to a depth of 70 mt; and as a result there could be a huge difference in the groundwater resource levels.

River runs dry
When Siemens was prevented from excavating land within the estate (referred to in the previous column) on Monday last by Joao Philip Pereira, it was because of the fear that the excavation would affect the water channel through which water flows from the estate into the valley further down into Verna, through Nuvem and onto Cavellossim. In fact, according to him, the PWD is pumping water from at least one borewell to an overhead tank to Mardol village and selling it to consumers at the price of processed water.

Obfuscation watered down

The six-member team had on board two officials each from the WRD and two from the Goa Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC), so all this comes from the horse’s mouth –the nonofficial members were Pereira and Edwin Pinto. It said five industries including Microlab, Parle Export, Siddi Vinayak (Kingfisher mineral water), Hindustan Coca Cola and Funtacy, consumed 469.11 cu. mt water per day. Though Hindustan Coca Cola has piped water, it draws water from the borewell on a 24-hour basis to keep pace with its huge demand. If you have been caught high and dry so far by the tizzy pace of the water flow, here’s a ready reckoner. The 326 units inspected consumed 8470 cu. mt annually (23.20 cu. mt per day). That’s what they declared to WRD, remember? The PWD supplies GIDC 561 cu. mt of water per day. This is as per the average billing of PWD to GIDC based on the last available 12 month period. Again, according to the industrial units which have borewells, their per water consumption is 3,073 cu. mt per day, and it is estimated that 1,380 cu. mt per day is sucked out through other wells outside the estate by consumers like Meta Copper & Alloys Ltd., Mardol Restaurant and Mardol Temple Trust, that sunk a total of 13 wells (these consumers are included in the figure of 326 units inspected by the team.) When you tote up the secondary figures (all officially declared) and discover that they don’t add up to the total consumption, this is only because no one appears to know what really goes on at Verna.

Mosquitoes and D’Artagan

Why should Churchill Alemao apologise to the G7 who are truly beginning to act like that self-exalted group of nations? Shouldn’t the G7 apologise to you instead for wasting your valuable tax money almost every week this year jetting off to Pune, Bombay and Delhi to meet Sharad Pawar etc? If Churchill must apologise it must be to be to the descendents of Alexandre Dumas who wrote that classic ‘The Three Musketeers’ which narrates the adventures of D'Artagnan after he leaves home to become a guard of the musketeers. D'Artagnan is not one of the musketeers of the title; those are his friends Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, inseparable friends who live by the motto "all for one, one for all". As for mosquitoes, shouldn’t anybody who bleeds your tax money, not be called a mosquito? Churchill might have done his homework for once, because mosquitoes cause more human suffering than any other organism on this planet. Here read ‘human suffering’ as ‘development deprivation’ because thanks to those tax bucks going down the drain, you don’t even have garbage disposal among the many things you don’t have.

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