Water shutdown: Many areas remain dry

 

 

 

The 24 hours shutdown by Orange City Water (OCW) on Wednesday literally left half of the city thirsty. As water supply was stopped for emergency valve replacement work since Tuesday night, the storage got emptied soon leaving the citizens in a quandary. While the supply was to be restored by 6 pm on Wednesday, till late night complaints were pouring in about lack of water in the affected areas. The work of OCW to change the faulty valve on 1200 meter pipeline emerging from Pench-II and III project put citizens in a major problem. Citizens had to rush to markets to meet the water demand as it was not possible for them to store water for 24 hours at stretch. About 25 elevated service reservoir (ESRs) connected with Pench-II and III did not receive water supplies since last night when the shutdown started at Pench water works.

 

However, as work got extended by further four hours beyond the stipulated time, it triggered sharp reaction from residential colonies that was banking on normalisation of water supply by evening today. Even 24x7 network areas of Nagpur Municipal Corporation were not left out of water crisis. Further the sultry atmosphere in city today further increased the demand for water. The Pench-II and III covers majority of Western part and parts of South Nagpur. Citizens said during the day time they managed with water cans from neighbourhood shops as they expected by evening the supply would be normalised. However, Sachin Dravekar, PRO, OCW, said, the replacement work was quite challenging and hence the technical team despite working at stretch faced difficulties in meeting the deadline. He said, had the valve not replaced in time then a major catastrophe would have hit the Nagpurians who would have gone without water for a week. As to delay, Dravekar said, OCW started pumping water from Pench at 6 pm sharp but obviously it would take some time before reaching the distribution network and then homes.

 

The procedure involved treatment of raw water and then its dispatch to Seminary Hills tank and from there to individual ESR that would take time to tank-up and then only the supply to homes can start. However, by evening citizens started working on phones when they had expected the water supply to normalise. In multi-storeyed buildings the water supply from OCW is one of the major factor and in its absence they managed the day time but by evening panic gripped residents. Citizens called up OCW Helpline to get latest position but they too could not explained the technical points. Normally OCW does not shut down both the purification plants but the defective valve was common to outward 1200 mm pipeline connected through Pench-II and III and therefore today scarcity like situation emerged in city for a while. The OCW spokesman expected supply to get normalised in 24x7 command area by Wednesday tonight and in other areas by Thursday morning at the most. On an average, OCW supplies 650 MLD water to city and with nearly 25 ESR empty, almost half of daily supply was affected and it was bound to put citizens to severe problem.