The family of Anthony Kuttappassera has been residing in the same home near the Arabian Sea for more than a century. He used to get his water growing up from the well and pond outside his house.
But that water started to taste too salty to drink 60 years ago. The water eventually became too salty for bathing or washing clothes. Similar to the other wells and ponds in the Chellanam neighborhood of Kochi, a city of about 600,000 people on India’s southwest coast, the pond is now green, muddy, and almost dry.
Climate change-related rising seas are contaminating fresh water supplies in places like Chellanam with saltwater, making what was once an essential aspect of daily life useless. The residents of this village, which is about 8 square kilometers (3 square miles), suffer from frequent breaks in pipelines that carry fresh water from inland, which necessitates trucking water in.
Each truckload of water must be manually transferred to the 600 homes in the village by pouring it into barrels and buckets.
“We lack clean water, not even for personal hygiene. We have no drinkable water despite being surrounded by water, according to 73-year-old Kuttappassera. “There was no such problem and we had enough water for everything when this pond was in usable condition.
Other sources weren’t necessary. However, we now use compressed water for everything.
Richer countries can adapt more readily despite the fact that saltwater invasion of vital groundwater supplies is a problem caused by climate change globally. It is more severe in nations like India, which is predicted to overtake China this year as the world’s most populous country. Although though it has developed into one of largest economies in world, India is still recognized as a developing country.
The third-highest producer of carbon dioxide, which causes global warming, is India. With ambitious goals for renewable energy, a green hydrogen project to produce clean fuel, and program encouraging individual individuals to live more sustainably, the country is gradually placing a high priority on the transition to clean energy.
Yet it will take time for that transition. In the meantime, rising seas, shifting ocean currents, severe storms, excessive well use, and overdevelopment are all thought to be factors in the Kochi region’s developing salt problem. Yet in a country where access to freshwater was already a problem, coastal districts face this challenge.
According to UNICEF, less than half of the people in India have access to clean drinking water.
Bijoy Nandan stated that “people are suffering aecause the aquifers are becoming salinized.” Since the first water investigations in the area were conducted in 1971, he claimed, salinity has increased by 30% to 40%.
Professor S. Sreekesh of Jawaharlal Nehru University used satellite, tide gauge, and other data from the 1970s to 2020 to study the escalating hazard in the Kochi region. He discovered that the seas were rising by 0.07 inch (1.8 millimeters) every year.
Water access in Chellanam is already challenging, but the pipeline failures make it even more challenging. During a recent outage that lasted approximately a month, the everyday struggle was evident. The game of moving from larger pots of water to smaller ones didn’t begin with the water being brought in by truck or rowed in via small boats.
Because to the congested, winding lanes, four enormous trucks carrying 36,000 gallons of water could only go as far as a church parking lot. Their water was transferred into smaller tankers, including 1,000-liter trucks and 6,000-liter, 4,000-liter, and even toy tankers.
Then, those smaller trucks traveled along one of the wider roads in the direction of the deliveries, stopping every few meters (yards) to set up big blue barrels. The truck driver would exit the vehicle, attach a tube, and turn a spigot to gradually fill each barrel one at a time. Then, locals dipped silvery 6- and 5-liter aluminum pots into the barrels.
One of the locals who waits for a truck nearly every day to collect clean water is Maryamma Pillai, 82. Without a water supply at home, she is forced to either purchase water, which costs approximately 40 rupees (about $0.50) for 5 liters, or wait for a government tanker truck to deliver it for free.
She struggles to carry her seven pots and buckets the 100 meters back to her house due to a cardiac issue. She had to stop since her chest is getting heavier.
I try to gather water in as many sources — buckets, pots, and tumblers — to take back home, she said, tapping her chest to relieve the tension that frequently results from carrying heavy objects. “I don’t have water for anything at home, not even washing my face,” she said.
According to Pillai, as summers get hotter each year, water shortages get worse.
It used to be possible to plan ahead for which season would have the most water availability, but today everything is uncertain, unexpected, and unreliable, she said.
Karni Kumar, another local, lives sufficiently far from the main road that it is more practical to use wooden boat to travel a brief section of backwater to fetch fresh water from the neighboring town of Alleppey. Yet because so many other Chellanam families follow suit, the demand for a single tap in Alleppey can often more than quadruple, resulting in lengthy lines and sporadic disputes with locals.
The residents of South Chellanam, according to the Rev. John Kalathil, vicar of St. George Church, must pay 100 to 200 rupees (about $1.21 to $2.42) per day for the water they use for drinking, cooking, and washing. It might account for 15% of their daily earnings.
The majority of the people who work for a living in his parish are fisherman, and they have a strong bond with and affection for the sea because it is their source of life.
They refer to the water as their mother and name it Kadalamma, he said. Yet, because of weather, sea and water sources, and climate change, their status is really bad.
