Jamshedpur: For the first time in Jharkhand, the steel city has commissioned an intelligent water network to prevent contamination and leaks in piped water supplied to residential areas with Jusco now working to use the technology across Jamshedpur by next year.
The Tata Steel wholly owned subsidiary, which primarily looks after civic needs of company command areas in Jamshedpur, uses a 650km network of pipes to supply around 190 million litres of water daily to residents. It is using the intelligent water network that comprises several DMAs, or district metering areas, which are essentially discrete closed areas set up by shutting down boundary valves.
"Water flowing in and out of a DMA is metered and flows are analysed on real-time basis to prevent water loss through pipe leakage. In the process, the system prevents contamination of piped drinking water. Sensors placed in DMAs will also give us real-time figures of water quality as per WHO standards," explained Jusco spokesperson Rajesh Rajan.
Jusco hopes to monitor the entire city area by next year. "So far, we have created 28 DMAs and 18 more will be added in March 2019, covering the entire area serviced by Jusco. We are the only civic utility in the state using this technology," he said.
With nearly 60,000 household connections, Jusco provides water to a population of more than seven lakh people residing in company command areas and several thousands in non-company command areas from seven water towers, namely, Burmamines, Sidhgora, Sakchi, Central (Northern Town, Bistupur), Kadma, Sonari and Tatanagar. Jusco also takes care of water supply at Birsanagar locality after an MoU was signed with Jamshedpur Notified Area Committee last year.
"Through DMAs we get real-time information on water pressure and quality online. We are also able to act swiftly to reduce loss through pipe leakage, pipe burst or any external pilfering (illegal tapping). We can also prevent water from getting contaminated with external sources," added Rajan.
Water loss during distribution in Jusco serviced areas in the steel is around 12.5 per cent, which experts noted was the best in the country.Water supplied in Jusco areas has a total dissolved solids count (a measure of combined content of inorganic and organic substances in a liquid) of less than 150 ppm, while the WHO standard is 500 ppm.
The turbidity (haziness in a fluid caused by suspended solids that are generally invisible to the naked eye) is about 1 ntu (nephelometric turbidity unit).
As for other primary parameters, Jusco water supplied by Jusco has free chlorine of 0.2 ppm, iron 0.3 ppm, aluminum 0.03 ppm and fluoride 1.0 ppm, all within permissible limits.
