50-acre land at Rampur village proposed for water treatment plant

Ludhiana: In order to supply canal-based water to the city residents, the civic body are finding suitable land for establishing water treatment plants. Though they had identified land at three locations, but land acquisition cost is high, and officials have proposed cheaper site for the same.
Almost 50-acre land at Rampur village has been proposed for which Rs 15 crore is required.
The officials concerned have identified three locations, including Bowani, Bilaspur and Rampur villages. For Bowani, land acquisition cost is Rs 70 crore, while for Bilaspur it will cost around Rs 55 crore. Therefore, Rampur village has lesser rate.
The civic officials have written a letter to the Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development corporation (PMIDC) for negotiation with the world bank over these rates.
The additional commissioner, Sanyam Aggarwal, while commenting over the same, said this was the world bank-funded project and through the PMIDC they would be informing the world bank about the land acquisition cost. He said the world bank would check and revert accordingly.
Requesting anonymity, one of the officials claimed that for canal-based water supply, they had been trying from past many years and in the beginning, the land was selected in PAU and Lohara village, but at both the location, they were denied land so they had to identify new sites. He said the project cost had increased, but even now, the discussion phase was going on and nothing concrete had come out.
There is a need for canal-based water supply in the city because of depleting ground water level. For around 17 lakh people, the civic body is dependent upon digging ground for installing tubewells in the city. Now, even the National Green Tribunal has imposed a ban on installation of more tubewells in the city as there was excess load on the ground water.
As per the civic officials, they are digging out 45-crore litre of water from 1,000 tubewells for providing water to the city residents in one day, whereas this much water is not being recharged back in the ground. The water is available at 120 feet which is not potable and at some places potable water is available at 600 feet. Around 10 years back, it was at 350 feet. The civic body is spending Rs 40 per 1,000 litre.