Source : The Hindu Date : 25.06.2009
Monitoring system for Siruvani Dam soon
Staff Reporter
Photo: K. Ananthan
Is it enough?: Collector P. Umanath (left) assessing the water position at the Siruvani Dam on Tuesday. —
Coimbatore: The Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage (TWAD) Board has planned to install a Remote Monitoring System (telemetry) connecting the Siruvani Dam with the TWAD Board office.
The system would help in round-the-clock and instant monitoring of rainfall and inflow into the reservoir.
This was disclosed to presspersons by District Collector, P. Umanath, Executive Engineer, P.Gopalakrishnan and Assistant Engineer, S. Sampathkumar.
To assess the rainfall levels, a rain gauge meter would be installed at the dam intake well site.
At present, people go to the dam site from the treatment plant at the foot hills braving the wild animals including elephant and bring in the rainfall level and storage position every day.
This led to delay and comes only at fixed time frame.
As per the new system, the rain gauge meter and systems to monitor the water level would be hooked to the TWAD office and National Informatics Centre (NIC) so as to make the statistics available at the click of a mouse round-the-clock.
The work is at the planning stage and once approved at an outlay of Rs. 10 lakh it would take about two to three months for implementation.
Considering the storage and lean season, the TWAD authorities have embarked on a mission to renew the water treatment and filtering systems at an outlay of Rs. 50 lakh.
The systems were put in place in 1984 and replacing the medium of filtering like pebbles, sand and filter house inputs would help in enhancing the efficiency of treatment.
Siruvani that flows by gradient towards the city is dependent on the monsoon while the perennial Pilloor suffered setbacks due to pipe bursts and leaks often.
Dr. Umanath and Mr. Gopalakrishnan said that in order to avoid trouble in Pilloor water supply scheme, the work for replacing the concrete pipes with mild steel pipes of 1,500 mm dia was being done for trouble-prone and frequent “burst- and leak-hit” 2.5 km stretch at an outlay of Rs. 1 crore.
The work has neared 66 per cent completion and the rest would be over in two months.