KMC mulls sprinklers for entire Eliot Park
Kolkata: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) has installed some sprinklers for watering the plants at Eliot Park in Maidan area and plans to have similar facilities for the entire park that spans around 1.2 km. The entire area will require around 40 such sprinklers. KMC has carried out a pilot project with a single sprinkler at Eliot Park, which has yielded good results.
Southern Avenue in South Kolkata is the only other place in the city, where the civic body is using sprinklers for watering plants. Around 14 boulevards in Southern Avenue have sprinklers and each of them is capable of watering seven to eight trees on an average. The installation of such facilities entail an investment of Rs 40,000 per sprinkler.
The sprinklers are used twice a day for watering the plants. They are controlled in such a manner that the entire process of watering is carried out scientifically. A person has to simply press a button to switch them on and off.
Apart from this, the civic body has 12 vehicles that water plants on a daily basis in the city. The gardeners working under the Parks and Gardens department of KMC carry out trimming of the trees from time to time, to ensure that the weight of the trees are adequate to remain rooted to the ground.
"Trimming is necessary to ensure that the trees do not become too heavy and become susceptible to uprooting," a senior official of the department said.
The civic body uses hydraulic ladders for trimming big trees. For Borough 1 to 10 of KMC, there is a hydraulic ladder each for carrying out trimming whereas in Borough 10 to 16, KMC uses two such ladders for the purpose. "We have already initiated the process of procuring some more ladders for trimming," the official added.
It may be mentioned that soon after taking over as the Mayor of Kolkata a few months ago, Firhad Hakim has formed a separate department titled Urban Forestry and has laid a lot of emphasis on preserving and augmenting the green cover in the city.
An expert committee has already been formed with Kumar as chairman, which will soon come out with a comprehensive plan on how to move forward with urban forestry in the city. Apart from botanists of KMC, the committee has environment experts from Calcutta University and Jadavpur University as well.
