Some of the high-rises in the area that will benefit from the pipe water project. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, March 19: People living in Pahala and adjoining areas can now hope to find water at the end of the tunnel.

The Public Health Engineering Organisation (PHEO) of the housing and urban development department has started work on phase I of its water supply project for Pahala and adjoining areas that fall within the limits of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation.

Work for the project was launched from Pahala in the first week of this month. Conceived in 2011, phase I of the project will cost Rs 7.28 crore.

The plan includes construction of nine production wells (borewells) that will supply water to an equal number of localities through a pipeline network of 29km. More than 27,000 people will benefit from this project.

Sources in the PHEO said the demography of Pahala, Johala, Jaipur, Nakhara, Naharkanta, Banguari, Haridaspur and Nuapatna was set to change rapidly with the areas witnessing a real estate boom. But these areas enjoyed limited supply of drinking water as the groundwater in many of these places had high iron content.

Executive engineer, PHEO division II, Manoj Ranjan Nanda said: “These places used to fall within gram panchayat limits, but are now part of the BMC area. In the first phase, production wells will be built at nine locations and an extensive supply network of pipes measuring 4 inches to 6 inches in diameter will be laid. However, reservoirs will not be used for this project. The water will be supplied when the production wells are in operation at a particular time of the day.”

Assistant engineer of the public health organisation Upendra Samal said each production well would pump out around 0.5 million litres of water per day (MLD).

Therefore, the total supply from the nine wells would be 4.5 MLD to 5 MLD. Eight locations would have one production well each, but Naharkanta would have an extra production well, as it has a larger population.

Officials concerned expect the production wells, as well as the pipelines, to be ready by December this year.

“We hope to supply drinking water to the localities by next year,” Samal told The Telegraph.