Mahanadi river near Naraj, the site for water supply project for Cuttack city. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Dec. 25: The water supply augmentation plan to provide additional 100 million litres of water per day for the city has received a boost of Rs 86 crore for Phase-I.

The long-pending Rs 324-crore project was conceptualised by the public health engineering department.

As part of the project, the department plans to construct 25 overhead reservoirs, draw water from the Mahanadi and the Kathajodi and build a water treatment plant on a 15-acre patch at Naraj. These measures taken together would boost the daily supply of water from 115 million litres 215 million litres.

Except for submission of detailed project report for Phase–I for government approval and allocation of funds, the project was still in the planning stage and no work had been done since 2010.

“Following approval of the state government, the Centre has sanctioned Rs 86.46 crore for Phase-I of the project,” a senior official of the department said.

“Construction of intake well, treatment plant and pumping stations will be taken up in Phase-I of the project,” the senior official said on condition of anonymity.

“Distribution points, overhead tanks and laying pipelines will be taken up in the second phase. Preparation of detailed project report for it is under way,” he said.

The water supply augmentation project assumes significance as the existing water distribution network has a capacity to cater to less than 3.5 lakh population. However, the city’s population has crossed six lakh.

As a result piped water still remains inaccessible for nearly three lakh people in various neighbourhoods of the city.

“Work is in progress to change old lines and extend the distribution network by putting into place new lines in areas deprived of piped water to facilitate implementation of the water supply augmentation plan to extend piped water to all the 54 wards in the city,” said Arun Nayak, executive engineer of the department’s Cuttack division.

“Over the past five years there has been progress in supply of piped water supply in my ward. But majority of the people in the ward still have no access to piped water,” said Pradip Behera, councillor ward No. 52.