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Chandigarh Smart City Limited receives responses from 14 firms keen on upgrading city’s 5 STPs
The Chandigarh municipal corporation has already been warned by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that if the plants are not upgraded, they will face a penalty.
Chandigarh Smart City Ltd (CSCL) has finally received a positive response from firms willing to upgrade the five sewage treatment plants (STP) in the city and the work is all set to start in two months’ time.
CSCL had failed to elicit any response in its previous attempts at floating tenders for the project. This time, however, a total of 14 companies have applied for three different tenders and the department is hopeful that within the next two months, work will be allotted.
The Chandigarh municipal corporation has already been warned by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) that if the plants are not upgraded, they will face a penalty.
The CSCL will bear the principal cost of the upgrading of the five STPs that comes to around ₹300 crore. The MC will operate and maintain these units for 15 years at an estimated maintenance cost of around ₹527 crore, which includes ₹289.36 crore electricity charges.
PROJECT DIVIDED INTO THREE WORKS
The upgrading of five STPs was divided into three different tenders instead of just one tender for all to encourage more firms to apply.
For the STP in Diggian, Mohali, which is the biggest among all five, a separate tender was floated and four firms have responded to it. Seven firms have applied for the upgrading of STPs at Raipur Kalan and Raipur Khurd; and three have applied for the Dhanas and 3BRD plants.
“We are in the process of vetting these tenders. The work will be allotted within two months, and by the end of the August work can be expected to start,” said an MC official, adding that it is likely to take another 24 months for the upgrading work to be completed.
WHY UPGRADE STPs
The effluent discharge from four of the five STPs into Ghaggar river’s tributaries has lately shown much higher biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) levels than the latest permissible levels of 10mg/litre.
BOD is the amount of dissolved oxygen needed by aerobic biological organisms to break down organic material present in a given water sample at a certain temperature over a specific time period. A low BOD is an indicator of good quality water, while a high BOD indicates pollution.
Apart from polluting the Ghaggar, higher BOD level is affecting the quality of treated water that the MC is releasing towards irrigation of public and private parks. Due to this, treated water stinks and is used less by private households.
None of the STPs in Chandigarh have the requisite machinery to deal with faecal coliform, a type of disease causing pathogen and major water pollutant, the most probable number (MPN) value for which needs to be contained below 230 MPN/100. Water pollution caused by faecal contamination is a serious problem due to the potential for contracting diseases.
