Kalimpong, Oct. 22: The Kalimpong Municipality will construct four additional storage tanks in town to facilitate better distribution of water to residents.

The civic body will make use of the Rs 60 lakh it had received from the Bengal municipal affairs department about two years ago. “The previous board had received the money, but had diverted some of it to other purposes. The funds were replenished only a few days before C.K. Kumai resigned as the civic chief,” said Norden Lama, the municipality chairman.

The new tanks will be set up at CarMichael Ground, Mission Compound, Haat Ghar and Lalgully. “We have issued tenders and once the formalities are completed, we will release work orders,” Lama said.

The capacity for the Haat Ghar tank will be 10,000 gallons water and the ones at Mission Compound and Lalgully will be 15,000 gallons each. The CarMichael Ground tank will store 1 lakh gallons, sources said.

The daily requirement of Kalimpong town is nine lakh gallons, while the municipality gets five lakh gallons a day. The shortfall has led the civic authorities to supply water to the residents on alternate day for an hour or so.

Lama, however, said the municipality can do very little to meet the shortfall as the distribution of water is the responsibility of the DGHC’s public health engineering (water works) department. “The authorities of Neora Khola Drinking Water Scheme (which brings water from the source to two reservoirs) and the department (which supplies water from the reservoirs to the storage tanks) must increase the volume of water to make optimal use of the tanks.”