New Town households to get filtered drinking water from June

The West Bengal Housing and Infrastructure Development Corporation (WBHIDCO) has spent Rs 350 crore for the purpose. The project has been implemented by the Public Health Engineering department (PHE). 

Presently, the residents are getting 9 million gallons of filtered water a day which would be increased later, Debashis Sen, chairman of HIDCO said.

After coming to power in 2011, Mamata Banerjee asked the engineers of PHE and HIDCO to come up with suggestions as to how water from river Hooghly could be brought to New Town. 

It may be mentioned that Left Front government which had set up New Town after filling up water bodies did not make plan to supply filtered water to the people of the area. 

Even after knowing that the area was situated close to the Arsenic belt in Barasat, they had allowed installation of 54 deep tubewells in New Town. The environmentalists raised their objection as they apprehended Arsenic contamination. 

However, their objections failed to yield results. With this, the residents had no other option but to drink water supplied by deep tubewells.

Considering the proposals given by the engineers it was decided that unfiltered water would be lifted from Debendrabala ghat in north Kolkata and it would be taken to New Town by an underground pipeline covering a distance nearing 17 km. It was decided that HIDCO will finance the scheme. 

Banerjee insisted that it should be completed by 2016. 

The task was not easy as throughout the globe it is the practice that the lifting station and the purification centre should exist side by side. 

For example, the Palta water works set up by the British in 1861, the country’s oldest water supply project, the lifting station and the filtration bed are situated next to each other. 

As the unfiltered water had to travel such a long distance, several problems could crop up. But all the problems were ironed out and Mamata Banerjee inaugurated the project which was completed well in advance in February, some days before the election code of conduct was promulgated.

The capacity of the reservoir in New Town is 20 mgd and this capacity will be doubled later. The New Town water supply scheme will provide filtered water to Bidhannagar, Dum Dum, South Dum Dum and Rajarhat-Gopalpur municipalities in future.