File picture of the sewerage project work near Sai Temple in Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar, May 29: The delay in laying sewer pipelines over the past six months has irked local residents so much that they have begun connecting their drains to the incomplete sewer lines.

The Rs 754.52-crore integrated sewerage project in Bhubaneswar was sanctioned in 2007 and the work started in 2008.

The initial plan was to complete it by 2010. Later, the deadline was pushed back to 2014. However, till date, only about 50 per cent of the pipe-laying is over. Of the 298-km pipeline, a 150-km stretch was done by December 2013.

Sources in the housing and urban development department, however, said that since 2008, there had been no revision of the price for the contractors, creating several problems.

“The price escalation proposal was under consideration and a high-level team of senior officials had taken a decision to revise the rates. These rates would be applicable from 2014 onwards. We hope the company will start work shortly,” said director of the city sewerage project B.K. Parida.

East Coast Constructions and Industries Limited, the contractors engaged for the project, have received the letter from the state government. Its regional manager in the city, Abu Backer Ariff, said: “We received the letter in last April. We will take up the work from mid-June.”

Sources said that earlier the cost for laying 1km of pipeline was between Rs 70 lakh and Rs 90 lakh. But according to the new rates, the contractor will now get between Rs 90 lakh and Rs 1.20 crore. The rate varies because of the difference in soil composition in various places.

Former councillor of Badagada Brit Colony Ashok Singh said that due to the inordinate delay in the execution of this project, many residents had already resorted to illegally connect their house drains to the sewer line, resulting in overflowing of wastewater on roads.

The project director said several illegal connections that were detected had been immediately removed. “People should have some civic sense. If a sewer line job is not done, they should not connect the house drains to it. It may damage the stretch,” Parida said.

Encroachment of the land earmarked for pumping station, delay in land acquisition for treatment plant, factors such as rocky soil and underground streams, apart from getting permission from the authorities such as railways for trenching under the tracks have hampered the sewer job.

“The contractors have been given an extension of 30 months, and they have to complete the work according to the government order,” the project director said.

“Cost-effective and sustainable sewerage treatment using plants and microbes have become the order of the day in many countries such as Germany and Switzerland. We should follow them as maintenance of the present-day projects are next to impossible,” former urban development secretary Fani Bhusan Das told The Telegraph.

“Delay in execution of the project and the problems created by local residents will solve no problems. If the state government had notified the town planning scheme to acquire land under the Bhubaneswar Development Authority’s jurisdiction, there might have been no need to approach the revenue department,” he said.

Das, an engineer himself, had planned nearly 25 de-centralised locations with ecological engineering concepts in mind to treat sewerage in the city when late Biju Patnaik was the chief minister.

“Now we have more money to spend, but there is no direction and considerations on ecology-based sustainable development models,” he said.