The State Government will implement a drinking water supply project at ₹1,018 crore to take care of the city’s needs for the next several years.
A decision to implement the project at once and complete it by the end of 2018 was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by the Commissioner of Municipal Administration G. Prakash, Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board Chairman C.N. Maheswaran and Collector T.N. Hariharan at the Coimbatore Corporation on Friday.
A release issued at the end of the meeting said the project would take care of the city’s drinking water needs even after 2050 as the plan was to tap River Bhavani at a point five km upstream of the Samayapuram barrage for additional water.
The justification for the project was that the population of the expanded Corporation (100 wards) was expected to touch 24.87 lakh in 2035, when the water requirement would be 429.75 million litres a day (mld) and reach 32.79 lakh when the water demand would be 565.55 mld. Given the present supply to the city, the deficit in 2035 would be 178.30 mld and in 2050, 318 mld. The proposed project would help bridge the gap, the release said.
After tapping the water from a well with 21-m diameter, the TWAD Board, which would implement the project on behalf of the Corporation, would convey it using cast iron pipeline with 2032 mm diameter for eight km to a treatment plant in Dasanur. It would then convey the treated water to a pumping station near Kattan hillock to store the water in a 73 lakh litre sump.
The TWAD Board would further convey the water through a tunnel in the hillock to a second sump of similar capacity and from there to a third sump in Pannimadai. From there, it would distribute the water to six over-head tanks at one each a zone after dividing the Corporation in to six water supply zones.
From there the Board would handover the water distribution to the Corporation, which would use its existing distribution network.
The release said the work involved acquiring 174 acre, which the Corporation would complete before February 2018. And, the Board would complete the entire project by the end of next year. The release added that senior Corporation officials led by Deputy Commissioner P. Gandhimathi took part in the meeting.
