Meeting For Implementing The 24-hour Water Supply Project
Coimbatore Corporation councillors and representatives of a consultancy firm at a meeting at the North Zone office in the city on Thursday. Councillors belonging to the wards in the North Zone of the Coimbatore Corporation called for efforts to identify the problems plaguing the present drinking water supply system and avoid these while implementing the 24-hour supply project for the city under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission.The members said this at a meeting held at the zone office on Thursday with experts from a German company engaged by the Corporation to provide consultancy services on the scheme. The Corporation has drawn up a project (Pilloor Phase II) at Rs.113 crore for an additional 60 million litres a day for the city. It already gets about 80 million litres from the Siruvani scheme and 65 million litres from the Pilloor Phase I scheme.
With the mission insisting on 24-hour supply, even as it approved the scheme, the Corporation has worked out a scheme with the objective of making uninterrupted supply. At present, water is supplied for a few hours on alternate days for close to 13 lakh people. North Zone Chairman C. Padmanabhan said after the meeting that the councillors were clear that any study of the city for a scheme should take into account the current problems like leaks in the lines. The new scheme should be trouble-free.
The members wanted a survey of the entire city that would include the size of each street and the number of people living in it. “We also suggested that existing reservoirs with a capacity of less than five lakh litres should be demolished and new ones with more capacity should be built,” Mr. Padmanabhan said. Maintenance of supply during peak hour (5 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.) and dead hour (10 p.m. to 5 p.m.) was also discussed. The members also suggested that one water tank could be built in each of the four zones to supply water to only commercial establishments, while the rest would cater to the needs of the residential section.
The councillors wanted the scheme to meet the water requirement of the city for the next 30 years at 135 litres per capita per day. They also wanted the design to have enough scope for expansion of the scheme in a growing city. “This is how the detailed project reports for all the schemes should have been discussed with the people’s representatives and cleared by them,” Mr. Padmanabhan said, alluding to the charge against the Corporation that none of the reports were placed before the Council.
