In what was a belated move yet welcome, work to remove silt from Rakkaskop reservoir across the Markandeya, the main source of drinking water supply to Belagavi city, commenced on Monday afternoon, when only about a month is left for the onset of monsoon.
Interestingly, work to remove silt has been taken up by the Belagavi District Chapter of the Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India (CREDAI) voluntarily.
The residents of the city had been demanding every year that silt be removed from the reservoir for the past several years with a view to improving storage and overcome shortage of water during the summer. Drinking water supply had been falling with every passing summer, due to the exponential growth of the city in the last two decades and increase in its population as well.
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The measure comes close on the heels of the city being selected for a five-year Smart City Project, which is set for implementation in a month or two.
The project envisages 24 x 7 drinking water supply to all the 58 wards of the Belagavi City Corporation, though 10 wards already have the facility.
CREDAI Belagavi president Quais Noorani told
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Mr. Jayaram had appealed to the meeting to join hands with the government to clean water tanks, river and nala beds and other water sources.
He said that five earthmovers were pressed into service by CREDAI. The Belagavi City Corporation provided around 10 tippers to shift the silt.
More earthmovers and tippers could be expected from Wednesday, as farmers were being pursued to take away the silt, which was of red soil and very fertile for agricultural crops. He said that the dam was spread over an area of 850 acres and cleaning process would be expedited to remove as much silt as possible from the reservoir before the onset of monsoon.
Silt accumulation
According to Executive Engineer of Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board N. Prasanna Murthy, who quoting a report of the National Institute of Hydrology as saying, said that 4.80 per cent of the reservoir’s storage capacity of about 0.58 tmcft was filled with silt since 1962 when the dam was constructed. The silt was not in the live storage area but mainly in the dead storage portion and below the intake level of the dam.