E-Paper
Dam full, but water cuts are back in Pimpri-Chinchwad
Considering heavy downpour in the Pavana dam catchment area,civic officials resumed daily water supply in the PCMC area on August 7
Residents across the industrial township of the Pimpri-Chinchwad heaved a sigh of relief when water supply was restored after ample rainfall in the catchment area of the Pavana dam. However, the relief is short- lived, as Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has decided to implement water cuts once again
Starting today, residents of Pimpri-Chinchwad will face water cuts once a week. The decision has been taken despite the fact that Pavana dam is filled to its capacity. On Saturday, civic water supply department released a ward-wise schedule of the water cuts.
“Recently, we restored water supply in PCMC, but because of high demand, and low supply, many cases of poor water supply and low pressure have been registered with the water supply department. Hence, we have decided to re-enforce water cuts once a week in order to regulate the water supply process,” said Makrand Nikam, joint city engineer, PCMC.
Considering heavy downpour in the Pavana dam catchment area,civic officials resumed daily water supply in the PCMC area on August 7. However, because of poor implementation, the civic body withdrew its decision within 10 days.
Rahul Jadhav, mayor of PCMC said, “Yes, the system of daily water supply has collapsed and there is an increase in the number of complaints, Hence, as per the recommendation of the civic commissioner, we have decided to cut water supply once a week till the situation normalises. We will ensure that there is equal distribution of water.”
According to PCMC officials, the Pavana dam has 97.3 per cent water stock as of August 17. Despite the dam being full, the water department has cited the failure of daily water supply mechanism as the reason for the water cuts.
According to officials, the dam has a capacity of 8.51 TMC (thousand million cubic). As of August 17, water stock had reached 97.73%. PCMC lifts at least 350 MLD water from the dam every day. Last year, by October end, the dam had 85 per cent water. After that, as the dam level went down, the irrigation department asked PCMC to implement a 10 per cent water cut. Therefore, PCMC put in place a water cut in the supply to residents from March. From May onwards, the PCMC initiated a drastic water cut by bringing in alternate day water supply plan as the water level in Pavana dam came down considerably.
