The commissioning of water treatment plant at Gunadala faces couple of hitches more. The construction works have come to halt with paucity of funds. Secondly, the Andhra Pradesh Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (SPDCL) is not in a position to provide power supply to the plant.
The Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) planned to finish the works before June 2010 soon after it got clearance from the Irrigation Department. The project was conceived in early 2008. But, the VMC could not complete it for various reasons, including paucity of funds.
Now, the VMC requires at least Rs. 2 crore to continue the works. The contractors are ‘unwilling’ to complete the works as their bills are long pending. The contractors will come forward if some of their bills are cleared. The SPDCL authorities have clearly told the corporation that the power supply will be provided only after completion of sub-station at Gunadala, say the VMC sources.
The Gunadala filtration plant is mired in controversy and problems ever since it was mooted. The corporation could not take up the project till November 2008, though the then Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy laid the foundation stone during the first quarter of 2008, as both the VMC and the Irrigation Department were at loggerheads with each other.
The objective
The corporation has planned to construct the water treatment plant of a capacity of 11 Million Gallons per Day (MGD), so as to draw water from Ryve’s canal and treat it for supply to more than three lakh people. However, the Irrigation Department is apprehensive of the likely adverse impact of the plant on the availability of water for irrigation to the tail-end areas of the canal if the plant were to be constructed. The VMC officials, however, argued that they will draw from the canal only about 20 cusecs of water a day, as against the canal’s carriage capacity of 2,000 cusecs a day.
A decision on permitting the laying of the pipes also delayed the progress as the irrigation officials have apprehensions about the pipes having a diameter of one metre obstructing the free flow of water in the canal.
