An arduous journey for a pot of water!

Precious commodity:Residents of Vellaturu collecting potable water from a pit dug up in the bed of Budameru rivulet.
VELLATURU (Krishna district): “Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.” This famous line from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” written by Coleridge describes well the plight of people living in this village of G. Konduru mandal in Krishna district.
The village has three overhead reservoirs that supply “protected water”, yet a majority of the villagers walk between one and three km for a pot of drinking water in all seasons. In fact, it is at the height of the rainy season when Budameru rivulet is in spate that they face the worse scarcity of drinking water.
The source of potable water on which they depend is not some hygienic spring seepage from the depths of the earth, but small ditches and holes excavated on the bed of the Budameru. Even in these days of canned water, the villagers depend on this age-old practice to ‘harvest' drinking water.
“Since I was a child, I have been coming to the Budameru to fetch water for my family,” says Subba Rao, 30, a farmer. “We tried to drink water supplied from the overhead tanks when they were built, but we fell sick. We use that water only for washing and bathing.”
Kiran Kumar, a student of engineering in a nearby college at Mylavaram, goes to these waterholes to fetch water when his mother and sisters are busy. “If we drink water from the big tank near the temple we get cold and cough. It is oily and tasteless. The water collected from the waterholes is tastier and healthier,” he says. Nagamani, 30, too has been coming daily with her friends since she married a youth of the village ten years ago. “Those who come for water show a great deal of camaraderie and help each other with cleaning the water holes and scooping the fresh seepage into vessels with a pan,” says Appa Rao, a worker in a textile shop.
The Vellaturu Gram Panchayat has overhead tanks with a cumulative storage capacity of over three lakh litres, but the people are not satisfied with the quality of ground water that is supplied to them, says the sarpanch, G.M Krishna Prasad. The only solution to the water woes of Vellaturu people is supplying water from the Krishna. The Gollapudi-Nuzvid water main that passes a few kilometres from the village could be tapped, but the relevant file is pending in the Chief Minister's office, he says.