GMC to stop water supply once Jal Board project gets under way

Guwahati: The Guwahati Municipal Corporation (GMC) will stop supplying water from the British-era reservoir atop the Navagraha hill with the complete commissioning of the south-central Guwahati water project by the Jal Board, sources said.
The said project will cover a vast area of the city that has around three lakh households. The Jal board has been carrying out trial runs of the water supply in a few localities, which will be covered in the first phase.
The work of the south-central Guwahati water project began a decade ago and was supposed to be completed by 2014. The project, with a capacity of 191 million litres per day (MLD) and funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), is the biggest of the four under-construction water projects in the city.
A GMC source said the civic body is waiting for the full commissioning of the project. “Until the project is fully commissioned, GMC will continue supplying water in the areas where it has been providing the service. No new areas have been covered or will be covered. GMC has already stopped supply in those areas where the Jal Board has already begun water supply from the new project,” the source said, adding that GMC will give up water supply altogether once all the four water projects become completely functional.
According to GMC, the Satpukhuri water treatment plant, commissioned in 1930 and renovated in 1984, lost its engineering life over 30 years ago. The plant has a capacity of supplying only about 22MLA water per day. The south-central project will cover the entire Gauhati East assembly constituency and parts of the Dispur assembly constituency.