Water supply to south Kolkata is likely to get a boost following an increase in the daily production capacity of the Garden Reach water treatment plant.
Kolkata Municipal Corporation has augmented the daily production capacity of the plant by 25 million gallons.
Mayor Firhad Hakim on Thursday inaugurated the enhanced production capacity of the facility.
The plant at Garden Reach supplies potable water to households across south Kolkata and parts of Kasba, Garden Reach, Behala and Jadavpur. Several pockets in these areas suffer from water scarcity, especially in summer. In some other areas, the flow is inadequate.
Engineers of the KMC said that with the increase in daily production, more potable water would be pushed into the distribution network every day. This will increase the pressure of the potable water in the system.
“With the increase in pressure, the flow of water will improve. The increased pressure will also ensure that water reaches further downstream to areas where water did not reach before because of lack of adequate pressure,” said an engineer in the KMC’s water supply department.
“We are hoping to enhance the supply within a fortnight. We need to undertake trial runs for a few days,” the engineer said.
The augmentation project began four years ago. Following the augmentation, the Garden Reach plant can produce 210 million gallons of water in a day. This is only second in the terms of daily production of potable water in the city.
The Palta water treatment plant can produce 260 million gallons of water daily.
The water from the Garden Reach plant will also be supplied to Joka where an underground distribution network is being built.