Kanke dam in Ranchi

Ranchi, June 29: Two Delhi-based agencies have agreed to act as consultants to save nine “dying” lakes and reservoirs, coming as a huge relief to the Arjun Munda government desperately trying to resurrect a Rs 67-crore plan to revive various water sources of Jharkhand.

In its second attempt to get the plan going, the state urban development department has got favourable responses from Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited and Tetratec India Limited to clean up and develop water bodies under the Centre’s National Lake Conservation Programme (NLCP).

“Bids of both agencies were opened today. It will take another couple of days to evaluate technical aspects. We will go for financial aspects after finding out about their capabilities,” additional secretary cum director (municipal administration) Sunil Kumar told The Telegraph.

If the state’s plan fructifies this time — an earlier attempt in April failed — it means good news for the three reservoirs in and around Ranchi, Gonda (Kanke), Getalsud (Rukka) and Hatia dam.

The others include Sitarampur dam (Adityapur near Jamshedpur), Charwa (Hazaribagh), Hazaribagh lake, Heru dam (Chatra), Khandoli reservoir (Giridih) and Topchanchi lake (Dhanbad).

All these reservoirs act as major water sources for their respective urban regions and their clean-up has been long overdue.

“This was the second bidding. Depending on the agencies’ technical and financial bids, we will decide whether to choose one among them or both,” said Kumar, indicating the task had become difficult since there were only two bids.

The short-listed agency/ies would act as a consultant for preparing detailed project report (DPR) for the overall revamp of all the water bodies besides monitoring the project when it is finally handed over to another agency for execution.

According to the plan, the “dying” water bodies are to be revived through de-silting, lake front development and restoring standard water parameters like biological oxygen demand (BOD) and chemical oxygen demand (COD).

Funding for the project is through with the Centre okaying Rs 47 crore under NLCP and the state agreeing to spend another Rs 20 crore. After DPRs are ready, the state government will seek the Centre’s sanction on individual projects.

For the last two years, the drinking water & sanitation department and the water resources department have been passing the buck on who should be held responsible for cleaning the reservoirs.

Both departments spent the whole of last year to prepare DPRs, but to no avail. Later, the state government asked the urban development department to handle the lake revival project.