Guntur Municipal Corporation on Monday began a mammoth engineering exercise of replacing the existing worn out drinking water pipeline with a new one.The pipeline was laid from Manipuram Railway over Bridge (RoB) to Nehru Nagar paving the way for laying of approach road to Manipuram RoB towards NTR Bus Station Complex.
The laying of new pipeline would enable GMC to augment water supply by 40 MLD. The city now gets a supply of 115 MLD. The pipeline measuring 1,200 mm dia extending to a length of 865 metres was being laid at a cost of Rs.1.83 crore.
The GMC suspended water supply to areas falling under High Level Reservoir (HLR) from Monday morning and the water supply is expected to resume on Wednesday. The GMC pressed 69 tankers into service to provide water to residential areas.
The engineering department of GMC began the exercise by inter connecting the old pipeline at five places. Workers dug up the roads and inter connected the joints at Padmaja Petrol Bunk near Manipuram RoB, at two places at Sitanagaram and two places at Nehru Nagar railway crossing. Inter connecting the pipeline with cement castings on both outside and inside was a difficult exercise and tested the patience of the workers. The works would be carried on Wednesday too.
Municipal Commissioner A Sarath inspected the works twice in the morning and asked the officials to be on their toes. Municipal Engineer Upendra Singh supervised the.works
The GMC had already laid the second water pipeline from Takkellapadu raw water source to filtration plant. The pipeline extends to a distance of 3.5 k.m.
Filtration plant
With the laying of second water pipeline, the filtration plant would start functioning to its full capacity of 90 MLD. The city gets 25 MLD of water from Sangam Jagarlamudi plant and 5 MLD from Vengalayapalem.
