KMC’s sewerage and drainage department to treat drain water, make it usable in bathrooms

Aiming to conserve water as much as possible, the sewerage and drainage department of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation is mulling over plans to treat drainage water for making it usable in households.

The sewerage and drainage department has received rupees 353.75 crore allocation in the annual budget tabled by Mayor Firhad Hakim on 13 February. With such a huge fund allocation, the department is laying a lot of emphasis on conserving water and preventing waterlogging during the rainy season. As pointed out by the MMiC for sewerage and drainage, the civic body along with experts of IIT Kharagpur, is planning a project of treating drainage water and making it usable in bathrooms for citizens. For this, the proposal has been finalised and sent to the mayor for approval. Once the project gets a nod, the work would be started soon.

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Notably, the sewerage and drainage department of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation is carrying out works on developing waterbodies for water conservation in six wards under the state government’s ‘Jal Dharo, Jal Bharo,’ programme. The waterbodies, set up by the civic body, are in ward numbers 113, 114, 94 and 117 along with a spot near Ballygunge pumping station. According to the member-mayor-in-council (MMIC) for sewerage and drainage, Tarak Singh, this is first-of-its-kind facility by the KMC that these artificially developed water bodies would have capacity of harvesting water. The rain water storing facilities would have paths for walking and sitting particularly for the elderly citizens.

The places would also include basketball, volleyball and badminton courts. “For rain water harvesting, we are developing facilities at 58 places at a cost of Rs 14.7 crore. The work on this project has been kicked off,” informed Mr Singh.

Apart from this, the department has also undertaken another project that would prevent water logging. According to Mr Singh, there are 27 lock gates in the city. “Of these, six have been done by us and 21 lifting stations would also be set up. The state irrigation department is to construct nine lock gates of which one is to be started at Pujali, at a cost of Rs 33 crore,” informed Mr Singh.

As underscored by the MMiC, the project has been approved by the mayor. Once completed, the lifting station would help in preventing waterlogging in areas under the limits of KMC.