Deserted sewage pumping stn turns into hub for bugs

CHENNAI: The delay in completing pipeline laying work under the Pallikaranai sewerage scheme has left a Metrowater sewage pumping station in Kamakoti Nagar idle for the last five years, with wells inside the facility turning into mosquito breeding spots.
"The pumping station was supposed to have started functioning in 2013," said M K Kumar, a resident of Kamakoti Nagar. Located on Ninth Cross Street in Kamakoti Nagar, the station is currently not maintained by Metrowater. As a result, its abandoned office building is used by miscreants. Liquor bottles and old tyre tubes were found dumped inside the building.

The facility's three wells were still holding water from last year's monsoon, thereby facilitating breeding of dengue and malaria causing mosquitoes.

City corporation officials said the land on which the pumping station stands was transferred to Metrowater for the project. "It was an OSR reserve land meant to be developed as a park or playground," said Purushotaman, another resident.

The pumping station in Kamakoti Nagar is part of the Rs 52.53 crore Pallikaranai sewerage scheme conceived under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. Work on the project started in March 2010. The network will link the pumping station at Kamakoti Nagar and three others (in Balaji Nagar, Vivekananda Nagar and Pallikaranai) with the Sholinganallur sewage treatment plant.

As many as 14,600 houses were to have been provided underground sewerage connections by way of laying 92.93 km of sewer pipelines. 'The work has been delayed because crucial pipeline links extending to around 2.5 km have not been laid yet. These will have to be laid on the state highways department controlled Velachery-Tambaram main road," said a Metrowater official.

These delays forced Metrowater to push the project's completion date from February 2013 to December 2017. But the agency now estimates that the pumping station would not be operational until at least September 2018.

"The highways department is clearing encroachments on the road near Pallikaranai. We will take up work on laying the pipelines within two months," the official added.