City heaves a sigh of relief, treated water reaches taps

In a good news for the parched Millennium City, water from the Chandu Budhera treatment plant reached the households through canal water pipelines on Sunday.

In a good news for the parched Millennium City, water from the Chandu Budhera treatment plant reached the households through canal water pipelines on Sunday.

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The Haryana Urban Development Authority (Huda) had on Saturday supplied 36MGD treated water through its pipelines to the city. The 36MGD included 3MGD treated at the new plant.

“It was the first day when water from the new plant was pressed into the pipelines connected with every household water tap in the city.
As the demand is likely to grow to 42-45MGD on Sunday, we hope to supply 5MGD from the new plant," said a Huda official.

With a capacity of 110MGD, the plant's one unit of 22MGD was made operational for the trial run on September 2. A fortnight later, the Haryana Irrigation department released 50 cusecs (22MGD) of Yamuna water from its Kakroi branch, Sonepat in the NCR channel that feeds the plant. Huda has laid a pipeline that connects the Chandu Budhera with the old plant at Basai — a distance of approximately seven kilometres.

However, residents and experts say Huda should have laid new water pipelines in order to supply water from the new plant.

They believe the old pipelines (1,300 mm and 900 mm), which are connected with Basai plant, would not be able to sustain the load of 65MGD water supply.

A retired chief engineer from Haryana government, on condition of anonymity said, "With a capacity of 60MGD, Basai supplies only 43MGD water — 17MGD short of its capacity — just because the pipelines are not able to sustain the load.”

“We doubt Huda will be able to supply 65MGD water through the existing pipelines," he said.