The pits dug up intermittently along the kerbsides across New Town have raised the heckles of residents who are perceiving them as threats to life and limb as also potential mosquito breeding grounds in monsoon.
Pipelines are being laid across the township and even along the Bypass by the Bengal Gas Company Ltd (BGCL), which is a joint venture between Gas Authority of India Ltd and Greater Calcutta Gas Supply Corporation, a state government enterprise.
“Ours is a three-year-old company and we have exclusive authorisation to operate in North 24-Parganas. We have applied for the requisite permissions from all the government bodies and are waiting for the same but in the meantime, we are creating our infrastructure so that once the permissions are in place and the gas becomes available, there is no further delay in supply,” said Pankaj Kumar Biswas, the head of the marketing and commercial wings of BGCL.
So even if there are teething troubles, the silver lining is that New Town will be among the earliest areas in Bengal to get piped gas supply when the service becomes available in future, the authorities say.
The company started commercial operation last year and is already supplying compressed natural gas (CNG) to vehicles through seven CNG stations in Calcutta, of which three are in New Town.
The pipes are being laid using the horizontal directional drilling method, a trenchless solution for constructing small diameter tunnels in which the boring machine is attached to the head of the pipe that follows the path of the tunnel as it is being bored. “The holes that you see on the road are for taking out connections to individual houses or the entry or exit points of the drill head,” said BGCL chief executive officer Satyabrata Bairagi.
But the laying of the pipes has caused disruptions in some places. There have been cases of water pipelines being breached. “A fortnight ago, they damaged a pipe at the corner of the lane in front of CB Market, at the intersection of Street 199 and Street 254. Workmen from the public health engineering department somehow managed to fill Tank 5 despite the leak, so our supply was not hampered. That hole has since been filled. But even now so many places on Street 254 and at the corner of Street 211 remain dug up though the pipes seem to be already laid,” said Debashis Sur, a resident of CB Block.
Nilmoni Seal, the secretary of 1CA to 1CD Block Association, recalled a lorry escaping an accident when one of its tyres nearly fell in such a hole within a few days of the pipeline leak. “Bystanders shouted a warning, so it could quickly swerve,” he said.
“Just an hour ago, a scooty driver fell into one of these near our house. He could have died if we hadn’t got people to pull him out quickly,” said Sudip Chowdhury of CD Block on Friday.
Residents wonder why New Town, despite being a planned township, lacks an underground map of the pipelines to prevent the breaching of existing pipes by those laying new ones.
NKDA chairman Debashis Sen explained that the drawing sometimes differed from the actual underground pipeline layout. “Precision engineering is not possible when labourers lay the pipes. There is some deviation from the map. The gas authority personnel are following our map but some cases are happening because of this. Our engineers are quickly attending to complaints and resolving the situation,” he said. NKDA is supposed to repair the roads on payment from BGCL.
The gas utility was recently called to a meeting with NKDA to discuss such issues. “These are practical problems that crop up while undertaking a big project. We see no pipeline in the map and we do the drilling. If a water pipe suddenly is in the way, the point is not to get into blame game but to repair the damage quickly. Still we are trying to minimise public distress. Our execution policy is mitigating pollution and public risk. We are cordoning off the dug-up areas with barricades,” said Bairagi.
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