Another water treatment plant to come up in Odisha capital

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, May 12:

Public Health Department (PHD) of Odisha Government is soon going to start work on a 115 million litre water treatment plant in Bhubaneswar under PHD division-3.

The Rs 250 crore project will take five years to complete and will be able to address water supply challenges in the city for the next 15 years, officials say. Initially planned two years back, the Detailed Project Report (DPR) has just been approved by the Urban Development Department.

While the project was earlier expected to be located in Munduli, now it is being planned to set it up in Bhubaneswar to address supply challenges in a more efficient manner.

“The water of Kuakhai and Daya rivers are polluted as they flow through the city. We are going to draw the water from Mahanadi from Munduli area as the water is not polluted there. Also, we are planning to set up the plant around Trishulia or Chandrasekharpur as there are vast amounts of government land there,” said a senior official of PHD Department.

“There would be no water scarcity around Infocity-2, Khurda and Jatni areas as there is a project under construction there. However, we don’t have water supply from Damana square till Nandankanan square even though population is on a steep rise in those areas,” the official said.

“A plant in Chandrasekharpur can better address the water supply issues there,” he added.

It may be noted that there are three water treatment plants for the city as of now, but they are not able to meet the supply challenges as the water level goes down way too low in Daya and Kuakhai during summer. This makes Mahanandi the only choice for round the year reliable water supply for the ever-growing population of the city.

There is a provision to draw 82 million litres of water from Kuakhai daily, but almost 96 million litres of water is being drawn to meet the demand. On the other hand, even though there is a provision to draw 15 million litres of water from Daya and 115 million litres from Munduli, only 100 million litres of water is being drawn from these places resulting in uneven load on the plants.

While the daily water requirement of the city stands at 165 million litres of water, 255 million litres of water is being drawn from borewells, Kuakhai, Kathajodi and Mundli. The city still can’t meet its water needs as more than 100 million litres of water gets wasted every day.