The Coimbatore Corporation has sent Rs.200-crore revised proposal to the Government of India to improve the water tanks under its control.
According to sources, the Corporation has told the Government that it would remove silt, strengthen bunds, take up repair works to weirs and do much more to the Narasampathy, Krishnampathy, Selvampathy and Kumarasamy, Selvachinthamani, Big Tank, Valangulam and Singanallur tanks.
The revised proposal follows a few queries the Government had raised on the proposal the Corporation had sent earlier.
Under this revised proposal, the Corporation would also fence the tanks’ boundaries, take up deweeding and bioremediation works, construct retaining walls, build community toilets to prevent people from using the tanks and treat waste water entering the tank.
As part of the work, the civic body also proposed to clean the natural drains that flow through the city and drain water into the tanks. The Corporation would remove silt and encroachment and clean the Karuparayan Koil, Koilmedu, Railway Feeder, Ganapathy-Singanallur, Sanganur, Trichy-Singanallur and Vilankurichi-Singanallur drains. The Corporation had told the Government that there was an urgent need to rejuvenate and develop the tanks as the increase in the demand for water, rapid urbanisation and the gap in demand and supply water had for put a strain on the tanks.
By cleaning the water flowing into the tanks and improving the water quality stored in the tanks, the Corporation hoped to bridge the gap between the supply and demand for water.
Once the Corporation completed the development works, the storage in the Narasampathy tank would go up by 58.74 per cent, the Krishnampathy tank by 47.23 per cent, the Selvampathy and Kumarasamy tank by 51.70 per cent, Selvachinthamani tank by 41.39 per cent, in the Big Tank by 7.27 per cent, Valangulam by 26.58 per cent and Singanallur tank by 29.25 per cent.
In short, the total water holding capacity of the tanks would go up from 50.55 lakh cubic metre to 65.67 lakh cubic metre.
The Corporation had also told the Central Government that it would conduct awareness programme, take up pisciculture, conduct capacity building programmes for stakeholders and much more.
It would also periodically test the water quality of the tanks after the development programme.
