A drainage pumping station in Sector V, the construction of which started in 2019, is yet to be completed and is unlikely to be operational during this monsoon.
Several parts of Sector V get waterlogged every year during the rainy season and the pumping station, near the Sector V Metro station, was meant to avert such conditions.
Since the pumping station, being built by the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority (NDITA) — that provides civic services to Sector V — is not ready yet, the authorities are banking on portable pumps to drain out water into the Eastern Drainage Canal once again.
The station, once operational, will pump out water from the Salt Lake Bypass — the artery that connects Sector V with the Chingrighata crossing — and the roads inside Sector V.
However, workers are still laying the underground drainage pipelines near the Sector V Metro station and the CRPF Camp nearby.
A senior official of NDITA said they have already hired portable pump sets that would be used to drain out water, as was done in the past few years.
“We will be setting up portable pumps along the Eastern Drainage Canal to pump out water from Sector V into the canal. The pipeline network of the pumping station is yet to be fully laid,” he said.
The stretch where the pumping station is coming up is on Salt Lake Bypass which has a heavy volume of traffic on both the EM Bypass-bound and the New Town-bound flanks.
The laying of the pipelines for the pumping station has resulted in a dug-up road leading to the Technopolisflyover on the New Town-bound flank of the Salt Lake Bypass.
The situation is similar on the EM Bypass-bound flank as well where most of it is dug up.
According to another NDITA official, work on the pumping station had stopped because of Covid-19 and lockdown. But three years have passed even after that and the progress has been very slow.
The construction and laying of the pipeline network for the pumping station had to be put on hold to facilitate the construction of the Sector V Metro station in 2022, the official added.