City residents who were badly hit by the quality of water supplied and the decrease in water supply may soon heave a sigh of relief. Chennai Metrowater was planning to replace drinking water pipelines that were over three decades old in several areas. The project is expected to be completed by this year-end.
The city had a drinking water supply network that covered about 4,500 km, including in the added areas. As part of its efforts to improve distribution, the water agency planned to replace nearly 310 km of pipelines across the city.
The project would be implemented under the Infrastructure and Amenity Fund at ₹ 116 crore. Work was already on to lay new pipelines covering a distance of 30 km in different areas.
Residents from different areas , including Mylapore, Purasawalkam, Vyasarpadi and T.Nagar, often complained of receiving murky water and demanded that the pipelinesbe replaced.
Metrowater sources said this project would focus on the core city areas that had corroded or defective water pipelines. It would also cover streets that did not have pipelines and provide additional feeder main pipelines to ensure equitable distribution of water supply. This would mean more water to the tail-end areas.
Pipelines in nearly 1,500 streets were set to be replaced with new ones. Even though the volume of water supply had been reduced to 550 million litres on alternate days, the project would enable residents to receive equal share of drinking water through piped network.
Of the total distance, 10 % of the project would be implemented in Mylapore, Nungambakkam, Alwarpet and Triplicane. The old cast iron pipelines would be replaced with ductile iron pipes that were cost-effective and had a life span of minimum of 25 years, sources said.
Tax revenue up
Chennai Metrowater has collected more water/sewer tax and charges during 2016-17 compared to the previous year.
A release said it has collected tax and charges to the tune of ₹437 crore compared to ₹397 crore collected in 2015-16. There has been a 10% increase in revenue with an additional ₹40 crore collected from consumers.
