Hardly anyone in Adilabad took cognisance of the fact that the old filter bed which supplied filtered and safe drinking water in the town for over 70 years has quietly become part of history.
About three months ago, the filter bed which was synonymous with the drinking water supply system in Adilabad Municipality — the oldest urban local body in the former composite Adilabad district — was closed completely with Mission Bhagiratha scheme taking over.
“No one seems to have time to ponder over the development though local people had a deep attachment to it. In all the past elections, the filter bed used to be a point of debate among voters as it was an important source of water supply in town,” laments Md. Nazeer, an elderly voter from Bhuktapur when informed about the closure of the old filtration plant.
Thirst-quencher
It was in the 1940s under the rule of the last Nizam of Hyderabad that the drinking water supply system came into being.
It incorporated construction of the Mavala Tank from where water was drawn through a 7-km underground pipeline by gravity to the filter beds located close to the district collectorate.
Known as the The Candy Rapid Gravity Filtration Plant, it was set up by the Candy Filtration Company Ltd., London, and became operational in 1947. The cost of the plant, however, is not known now.
Engineering marvel
“It supplied 1.5 million litres of water per day all these years,” recalls in-charge of Mavala water supply in town, T. Ganga Reddy, who retired about six months ago. “The system required no expenditure for maintenance except for the cost of 18 to 19 tonnes of alum and bleaching powder every year,” he adds, hinting at the ingenuity in planning and executing the water supply system which is nothing short of an engineering marvel.
The water supply scheme was actually designed for a population of 20,000 in the 1940s when Adilabad town got almost all its infrastructure as the district headquarters. The first civic election in 1952 saw the scheme being handled by the municipality.
“It was after the phenomenon of rapid urbanisation that the filter plant faced some problems. Construction activity resulted in damage to the pipeline as the town kept expanding in the 1970s,” Mr. Ganga Reddy recalls.
