Even as the city is a long way from installing water meters in houses and to provide 24-hour drinking water supply, an apartment in Chennai is already using water meters to share the water bought from private tankers and Metro water tanker lorries.
One of the meters installed at the apartment in Adyar
Chennai:
Padmanabha View apartment in Gandhi Nagar in Adyar has 15 water meters installed at the outlet pipes on the overhead tank. “For the past three or four months, Metro water supply is insufficient and we are buying at least 15 tanker lorries of water every month.
As it is unfair to collect equal amount of money as all the tenants do not use the same quantity of water, we installed water meters five years ago,” said C Ramakrishnan, vice president of Federation of Adyar Resident’s Association (FEDERA).
Unlike other apartments that schedule the opening of water from the overhead tanks, Ramakrishnan’s apartment provides water to the tenants round-the-clock.
“Our tenants get water for 24-hours and we are collecting money only for the quantum of water each tenant uses every month. If we get Metrowater-supplied pipe water, we will not collect money,” he said. Apart from keeping the track on the amount of water used by each tenant, the move has helped the apartment save water as the tenants had adopted austerity measures to reduce spending on water.
Meanwhile, many apartments in Adyar and Besant Nagar areas are depending more on private water tankers as the Metro water supply has been reduced. Cost of water supplied by private water tanker lorries is twice the amount collected for the Metro water tanker lorries.