The Baranagar-Kamarhati waterworks settling tank, that has waste discharged into it. Picture by Amit Datta

Nearly 600,000 people living in a 12-sq-km area on the north-west outskirts of Calcutta, and thousands of pilgrims visiting Dakshineswar and Adyapith temples, drink filtered drain water supplied by the Kamarhati and Baranagar municipalities.

The Baranagar-Kamarhati waterworks at Dunlop supplies nearly eight lakh gallons of treated surface water to households daily. It is supervised jointly by a nine-member committee, comprising councillors of Baranagar and Kamarhati municipalities.

But the settling tank, from which water is drawn and treated before being pumped into the civic distribution network, is spread over 400 bighas and is used by more than 1,500 denizens of Lenin Colony, a shanty town on its banks. They bathe and wash their clothes in the tank and relieve themselves around it.

The shanties bordering the north-west corner of the settling tank discharge their wastes right into the tank.

The municipality, the local guardian of sanitation hygiene, too, does not lag behind the shanty-dwellers in pouring filth into the tank.

It has connected the drains of the waterworks compound right to the point of the tank from where water is drawn to the pumping station for treatment and distribution.

Worst of all, flouting all established security norms in running a sensitive public utility unit like a waterworks, Kamarhati municipality, for the last five years, is renting out the peripheries of the tank for picnics.

It fetches the civic body a paltry revenue of a few thousands a year.

?I have no idea about what is going on there, but if it is true, it is in gross violation of the provisions set in the Central government?s waterworks manual and related rules of the state government,? said the chief engineer (water supply) of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation, who looks after the largest waterworks in West Bengal at Palta.

At Palta, even civic employees living in the quarters are not allowed to enter the zone of the settling tank without permission and the area is kept under surveillance round-the-clock by patrolling armed guards, said mayor-in-council member (water supply) Sovan Chatterjee.

Surprisingly, neither Baranagar municipality chairperson Anuradha Roy, nor chairman Govinda Ganguly of the Kamarhati body, nor water supply committee president Dayamay Mukherjee find anything wrong in the entire system of allowing shanty-dwellers and picnickers access to the settling tank, which should be a no-go area.

?The presence of such a shanty so close to a waterworks is not desirable. But that does not affect the functioning of water supply,? said Mukherjee in defence.

When Kamarhati municipality chairman Ganguly claimed that water samples are tested regularly in a private laboratory and nothing wrong has ever been found in them, Anuradha Roy of Baranagar municipality countered him, saying that there had been an outbreak of hepatitis in some wards of her municipal area in December.

?But we could not ascertain the exact source of contamination,? she said.

Both Ganguly and Roy stressed: ?We treat the water and charge it with chlorine before supply to households. Hence, it is immaterial whether or not drains are connected with the settling tank or whether shanty-dwellers use the settling tank for daily use.?