The reservoir at Kaliabali of the Rushikulya joint water supply project in Ganjam has dried up after Phailin. Pictures by Gopal Krishna Reddy

Berhampur, Nov. 4: Sunil Gantayat, a resident of VIP Colony at Kamapalli here, has been deprived of piped drinking water for the past 24 days after Phailin.

Earlier, the family used to get drinking water from Rushikulya water supply project at Kaliabali, which is not functioning after its electrical installations and some of the water supply ancillaries were severely damaged due to the cyclone.

Like Sunil, thousands of domestic consumers of Rushikulya water supply project are deprived of piped water.

Executive engineer of urban water supply, Berhampur, Prasant Kumar Mahapatra said Rushikulya water supply project was expected to be operational within a week.

City residents get piped-water supply through two projects — Rushikulya joint water supply project and Dakhinpur project. Both these projects were shut down since Phailin. The Dakhinpur project has already started since a fortnight. But as the electrical installations of Rushikulya joint water supply project were completely damaged by the cyclone, the water supply could not resume.

“Attempts are being made to restore power supply to the Rushikulya. The day they will resume power supply, we would run the project,” said Mahapatra.

“We have entrusted National Small Industries Corporation to restore power supply for this project. The restoration work was slowed down on Saturday and Sunday due to Diwali. Today it has picked up,” he said.

Rushikulya project was commissioned during the ’80s. The city was getting 37 million litres per day (MLD) of water through Dakhinpur project and 16 MLD through the project. The pipelines between the No. 1 and No.2 collectors well to the reservoir are in working condition. But the 200-metre long pipeline between No. 3 collector well and the reservoirs has been damaged at about eight points.

“We have started the process of repairing the pipelines by ordering the ancillaries from Calcutta and Hyderabad,” said the executive engineer.