After waiting for over five years, residents in Padil area in the city will be able to officially connect their sewer lines to the underground drainage network of Mangaluru City Corporation next month as the Padil wet well has been revamped and the network issues have been addressed, according to Mayor Premananda Shetty.
The Padil wet well, which pumps sewage to the 20 MLD (million litres a day) processing capacity sewage treatment plant (STP) at Bajal, had remained defunct due to non-maintenance after the Karnataka Urban Infrastructure Development and Finance Corporation (KUIDFC) handed it over to the civic body in 2015.
The pumps at the wet well have been repaired. The KUIDFC authorities have cleaned the manholes and have conducted flow test. The missing link on the trunk line near the railway underpass near Mangaluru Junction is through and has been connected. The civic body will issue a notification in a few days asking people to connect their sewer lines to manholes, Mr. Shetty told The Hindu.
A KUIDFC official said that Padil wet well pumps sewage till Mangaluru Junction Railway Station. Later, it flows to the wet well at Kadekar through gravity in the underground network via Yekkur. The Kadekar wet well then pumps it to the Bajal STP.
Once the corporation issues the notification, residents in about a 5-km radius of the Padil wet well can link their sewer lines to the underground drainage network, he said. However, some people have already unofficially linked their sewer lines to the network.
Soon after after taking charge in early March, the Mayor reviewed the maintenance of underground drainage network and associated facilities built by the KUIDFC under the loan availed of from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the corporation. The ₹220-crore project was taken up under the Karnataka Urban Development and Coastal Environment Management Project (KUDCEMP).
The Mayor who inspected it in late March noticed the poorly maintained Bajal STP and four wet wells connected to it at Padil, Faisalnagar, Jalligudda and Kadekar. Later, he had asked both the corporation and the KUIDFC to address the maintenance and pumpset repair issues jointly and revamp the facilities to put them into use.
The KUIDFC official said that it would take another three months to repair the pumps at Faisalnagar and Jalligudda wet wells. Both the wet wells have been re-connected with power supply now, he said.
Source: Read Full Article