The woefully deficient water supply in West Kochi is all set to be a thing of the past with new pipelines transporting water from the Maradu Water Treatment Plant to the area being commissioned on Thursday.
West Kochi, which has been receiving just 25 million litres a day (mld) against a demand of over 40 mld, will begin getting an additional 15 mld in the first phase, the work for which cost Rs. 7.55 crore. About 1.5 lakh people in the area will benefit from the scheme.
With this, West Kochi, like the city’s core area, will get water from both the Periyar and the Muvattupuzha rivers supplied from the Aluva and Maradu treatment plants respectively.
The plan to supply the additional water available at the Maradu plant to West Kochi was chalked out after sanction was not forthcoming for trenching the road for laying a new pipeline from the Perumanoor pump house to Thevara. While the administrative sanction was obtained in 2014 to replace the old 700 mm main pipes, it could not be executed.
The 100-mld Maradu plant was commissioned as part of augmenting the city’s water supply under the Kochi Corporation’s Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The port area, Maradu Municipality and the nearby panchayats are the major beneficiaries of the project.
In the West Kochi project, a new 185-metre-long 700 mm pipeline from the Thoppumpady bridge connects with the 750 mm DI pipe at the CIFT junction, where the Maradu water pipeline has a port. Further, a new 600 mm MS pipe will take the water underneath the Thoppumpady bridge across to the pump house from where another 700 mm pipeline will transport the water to the Karuvelipady pump house across 1.85 km.
The Kerala Water Authority had a harrowing time executing the project as there were multiple problems such as an erring contractor and the uphill task of getting the sanction to trench the road to lay the pipeline from the Thoppumpady pump house to Karuvelipady. Even as both the Public Works Department and the Kochi Corporation dithered over according sanction, the District Collector used his powers under the Disaster Management Act and approved laying of the pipeline.
Ironically, for all its water woes, West Kochi was included in the first ever water supply project that was started in Chowara during the reign of the erstwhile King of Kochi in 1914. The Chowara project supplied 2.3 mld of water and the Aluva treatment plant that came up later was augmented to produce 225 mld of water in various phases. However, the share of water for West Kochi dropped because of the greater demand from the developing core area of the city and the low capacity of the old pipelines that transported water to West Kochi.
Mathew T. Thomas, Minister for Water Resources, will commission the project on Thursday at a function at Mattancherry at 4 p.m.