Representative image: Hard, untreated water supplied in the name of Ganga Jal
Residents of Prateek Laurel, Amrapali Zodiac, Prateek Wisteria, Kendriya Vihar I, Express View and other apartments of Noida have a common problem. They all have to drink water unfit for human consumption.
They complain that instead of potable water, Noida Authority is supplying untreated hard water for quite some time now. KR Sharma, a resident of Kendriya Vihar I, Sector 51, for the past many years, says he has never seen quality water supplied by the Authority. “Residents don't have a choice. They are drinking this water for so long now that they seem to have become immune to its adverse effects,” he says.
Noida Authority had assured residents it would start supply of proper Ganga Jal by end of March but could not stick to the deadline.
Sandeep Singh, president of Apartment Owners Association, Prateek Laurel, Sector 120, says the water tastes brackish. "Almost all residents of the apartment have water purifiers installed at home, as they have realised that they are not going to get treated water from Noida Authority. We are all getting hard groundwater for more than three years now," he adds.
The Authority, on its part, claims it is supplying Ganga Jal mixed with groundwater, where 56 per cent is Ganga Jal and 44 per cent groundwater. But residents say private agencies hired for maintenance of their Reverse Osmosis (RO) machines contradict this claim.
"According to the RO technicians, the total dissolved solids [TDS] in the water is way beyond the standard limit," said Singh. TDS content in the water at Prateek Laurel is reportedly 1,600 and that at Amrapali Zodiac is a staggering 2,000.
Project engineer of Noida Authority, Samakant Srivastava, admitted that if TDS content in the water was more than 400, residents should go for an RO machine. He, however, dismissed the data given by the RO technicians as a marketing strategy to promote sale of their own products.
