The Hindu : Sewerage for major areas in capital

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 17, 2002

Southern States

Southern States - Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram

Sewerage for major areas in capital

By Our Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM July 16. The long-awaited Sewerage Augmentation Scheme is expected to bring the most important areas of the capital city within the drainage network and take care of its sewage disposal requirements for the next 15 to 20 years.

Once the Rs.15-crore scheme comes into operation, the new parallel pipelines would also relieve the load from the existing sewage network that is today carrying sewage many times its design capacity.

The work on the laying of about 70 metres of the 1200 mm pipeline under the Valiasala Railway Crossing is expected to be over in two months. Once this is done, the old network and the new grid could be linked at Killippalam and Jagathy, thereby avoiding further overflow of sewage into the Killi River.

Once the new pumping station at Kuriathy is commissioned, the KWA plans to augment the capabilities of the old pump house so that in another six months, Kuriathy will be able to pump out 1,319 litres of sewage in one second.

As part of the project, work on a new pumping station with 700 litre/second capacity and a 2000 KVA sub-station had been initiated. The project involved the laying of 3,430 metres of ductile pumping main line from Kuriathy to the Sewage Farm at Muttathara. Work on providing a dedicated 11-KV line from the KSEB's Thirumala sub-station to Kuriathy has been completed at a cost of Rs. 140 lakhs.

The scheme to lay a main intercepting sewer from Sasthamangalam to Kuriathy and to augment pumping activities there, was partially completed in 1986, when the Kerala Water Authority completed the task of laying 750 mm lines from the Pippinmoodu pump house to Idappazhanji, 1,000 mm lines from Edappazhanji to Jagathy Junction and 1,200 mm pipes from Jagathy Junction to Kannettumukku Junction.

Thereafter, the work of laying 1,200 mm lines from Kannettumukku to Kuriathi made tardy progress mainly due to financial constraints and technical limitations faced by the KWA in laying sewage pipelines eight to 10 metres below the surface, to effect gravity flow of sewage from Kannettumukku downwards.

Things started looking up again in 1996, when the KWA decided to look to national-level contractors and companies to help it master the technical bottlenecks in the completion of the project. Accordingly, the Authority signed an agreement with the National Project Construction Corporation (NPCC) in 1998 for completing the remaining work of the project within a time frame of two years.

During this time, sewage line bursts and overflows along the Kochar road had become a daily affair, resulting in heavy overflow of raw sewage into the nearby Killi, polluting it severely.

Following a directive from the High Court, new sewage connections in this area were banned from 1999 onwards. With the entry of the NPCC on the scene, the laying of pipelines from Valiasala, which had become a major stumbling block for the KWA which was unable to get any response from contractors for its tender for this part of the project, was resolved.

The Railways were entrusted with the task of building concrete ducts for housing the pipelines passing under the railway tracks. Now, apart from the work of laying 1,200 mm pipelines in the 1480-metre stretch till Kuriathi, work on upgrading the pump house there was also taken up.

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