The long wait for underground sewer connection for over 30,000 houses in 20 wards in the old city area will be over in the next few months as the Coimbatore Corporation is expected to complete construction and commission of the sewage treatment plant in Nanjundapuram.
The Corporation sources said as a first step to provide the sewer connection, the Corporation would start issuing applications in the next couple of weeks to the residents in the 20 wards. In the Corporation’s assessment, there were 33,000 houses that would benefit from the move.
The 20 wards covered parts of Nallampalayam, Rathinapuri, Ganapathy, Avarampalayam, Gandhipuram, Race Course, P.N. Palayam, Puliakulam, Sungam, Olympus, Ramanathapuram and a few other areas.
The Corporation had designed the old city’s underground sewer system in such a way that it treated the sewage from the aforementioned areas at the Nanjundapuram treatment plant, which had an installed capacity to treat 40 million litres a day.
The civic body had almost completed all the civil work and was in the process of installing the equipment to treat sewage, fixing the devices needed for odour control and to transmit pollution data on a real-time basis to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.
The sources said the Corporation was mandated to install the odour control and data transmission devices by the National Green Tribunal, which heard a case filed by residents in the neighbourhood of the site chosen for the treatment plant construction.
It was this case that had dragged the sewage treatment plant construction for over a decade now as the Corporation had started the work in 2008 at ₹33.79 crore. In April that year, the Corporation that suspended work following a court injunction fought legal battles at various fora finally got a go-ahead sometime in 2017 from Supreme Court.
As part of the go-ahead order, the Court had asked the Corporation to relocate two tanks away from one of the residential localities in the north, raise the heigh of compound wall, install a higher power diesel generator, odour control devices and pollution data transmission devices.
To comply with the order and resume work, the Corporation had re-engaged the contractor who had initially taken up the work. But it had to cancel the contractor, float fresh tender and award the work to another contractor, the sources said.
The first tender the Corporation had floated was for ₹33.79 crore. At the time of suspending the work, the Corporation had spent ₹17.96 crore It floated the second tender for ₹43.60 crore and the amount included the works the court had mandated, the sources explained.
