Water treatment plant in New Town to be upgraded in phases

The Public Health Engineering (PHE) department has chalked out an elaborate plan to upgrade the water treatment plant in New Town to 100mgd capacity in phases.

It has also made plans to provide piped water to some areas in North 24 Parganas like rural areas of Rajarhat, Haroa and Bhangar and has approached the Asian Development Bank for financial assistance.

The present capacity of the water treatment plant at New Town is 20mgd. It will be upgraded in phases and will be converted into a 100mgd plant. The plant will supply drinking water to New Town, areas under Nabadiganta that is Sector-V, Salt Lake and areas under South Dum Dum municipality.

The capacity of the water treatment plant will be upgraded as the population of the areas where it will supply drinking water is growing fast. New Town is the destination for residential and commercial activities. It is becoming the hub for health, financial activities and education. Presidency University and St Xavier's University are constructing their second campus in New Town.

Several hospitals have come up and more will come up in future. "Unless planning is done now, it will not be possible to supply adequate piped water to the residents and people who will come to the area for work in New Town," a senior PHE official said. Similarly, the skyline in South Dum Dum municipality has changed over the years where more than 90 per cent of the old structures have been pulled down to make room for multi-storey buildings.

Before Mamata Banerjee came to power in 2011, drinking water in New Town was a major problem. The erstwhile Left Front government did not have proper planning and 54 deep tubewells were sunk to provide drinking water to the residents. But as Rajarhat is situated close to Barasat where water in many blocks is arsenic contaminated, environmentalists demanded that piped water should be supplied to New Town.

After coming to power, Banerjee urged PHE engineers to come up with suggestions on how piped water could be provided to these areas. Accordingly, a plan was taken where unfiltered water was lifted from Debendrabala ghat in North Kolkata and taken to New Town via pipeline, where it was treated covering a distance of around 20km. The unique scheme has been prepared by the engineers of PHE who are now busy making plans to upgrade the water treatment plant in phases.

PHE is also making an exhaustive plan to provide drinking water to the people of Jaigaon in North Bengal by lifting unfiltered water from river Torsha and filter it. The filtered water will be supplied by pipeline.