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The Nilgiris district is facing a spell of dry weather, affecting tea plantations and vegetable cultivation. High temperature and low humidity increased evaporation in the soil, thereby reducing its moisture content. No agro-climatic zone in the Nilgiris received any rain last month.
Even the cumulative rainfall in the first quarter of 2016 was scanty compared to the same period of 2015, and the decennial (10-year) average for the period, meteorological sources told BusinessLine .
From January to March, Kotagiri received the highest cumulative rainfall of 3.7 cm (Jan-March 2015: 15.4 cm; decennial: 16.9 cm), followed by Coonoor 3.2 cm (27.3 cm; 18.6 cm), Kullakamby 2.8 cm (12.1 cm; 15.7 cm), Kundah 0.4 cm (20.6 cm; 13.2 cm) and Ooty 0.3 cm (16.3 cm; 6.2 cm).
Drinking water scarcity is growing acute day by day. “In Coonoor, municipality is supplying water through taps in different areas only once in 7 to 15 days. If this is the situation in April, we wonder what would happen next month when summer conditions peak and tourist inflow increases”, said R Subramanian, Convener, Federation of Service Organisations.
“The Centre’s only answer is that a project has been drawn to bring water to Coonoor from Emerald Dam. This dam is situated several kilometres away and the project has not progressed into any mentionable extent to bring water to the town in near future”, he said.
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