Water supply to large parts of east Kolkata and southern fringes will be hit after 10am on Saturday because of the repair and maintenance of pipelines at the Dhapa water treatment plant and at least seven other booster pumping stations linked to it.
Normal supply will resume on Sunday morning, Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) officials said.
KMC officials said parts of Anandapur, Mukundapur, Patuli, Garia, Baishnabghata, New Garia, Kasba, Garfa, Survey Park, Panchasayar, Santoshpur, Panchannagram, Ajoynagar, Picnic Garden and Topsia would be affected for most of the duration.
Also to be hit are parts of Tollygunge, Jadavpur, Golf Green, Jodhpur Park, Dhakuria, NSC Bose Road, Ranikuthi and Bansdroni.
The Dhapa plant, which can treat 30 million gallons of water in a day, supplies to areas along the two sides of EM Bypass, between Science City and Garia, through a network of booster pumping stations.
Some of these stations are in Mukundapur, Anandapur, Patuli and Topsia.
“We will install several high-diameter valves and repair a few of the existing ones at the Dhapa water treatment plant to regulate supply in transmission lines,” said a senior KMC engineer.
“The motors and pumps at Dhapa and those at the booster pumping stations work throughout the year. They need some break for maintenance. Suspension of water supply for some hours offers us this scope.”
Officials said engineers would also plug leaks in the network and repair high-voltage motors, pumps and other electrical appliances. Leakages in the network cause loss of huge volumes of water.
The KMC sends 488 million gallons of water into the city’s distribution system every day, but nearly half of it goes to waste or is unaccounted for, officials said.
The maintenance of the Dhapa plant comes within weeks of the state government’s decision allowing the civic body to augment the capacity of the facility from 20 million gallons a day to nearly 50 million.
The Rs 129-crore augmentation project is likely to take off before the Puja. Engineers said it was necessary to complete the repairs and maintenance before the work on capacity enhancement starts.
“We can shut down the Dhapa plant just once a year. So we decided to do it now before the demand for water rises with the onset of summer,” an engineer said.
Since its inauguration in 2014, the Dhapa water treatment plant has been a crucial element in the water supply network serving vast swathes of places.
