The water re-cycling plant at ‘Nalan Kulam’ at Sri Dharbaranyeswarar
Temple in Tirunallar, popularly known as Sri Saneeswarar temple, near
here, will be completed by September.

The work had stalled due to delay in sanctioning of funds.

The tank needs periodical re-filling of fresh water, as a large number of devotees take a holy dip in it.

Sacred dip

The
volume of devotees visiting the temple and taking a dip in the tank is
large during the weekend, as Saturday is considered auspicious for
devotees to offer their prayers to Lord Sri Saneeswarar.

The tank is cleared of the water periodically. So are the clothes abandoned by devotees.

The
need for a water recycling plant has been felt largely due to the large
volume of water pumped into the tank everytime. “The groundwater table,
though safe now, will be disturbed in course of time. Hence, the
implementation of the project was taken up under the Tirunallar Temple
Town Development Project at an estimated Rs. 2.14 crore. Though work was
delayed, there would be no hike in the estimates, an official source
told
The Hindu
on Wednesday.

Official
sources say about 25 lakh litres of water are required to re-fill the
tank, which is about 1.5 acres in size. The treatment plant can handle
12 lakh litres, according to a technical report.

Procedure

Adoption
of filter process — aeration filter and sand filter — is the first
procedure for re-cycling. The used water from the tank is fed into a
series of four tanks.

While three tanks are of uniform in size —
5.5 metre in diameter and height of six meter in height — the collection
tank is larger with 16 metre in diameter and height of four metre.

Work on installation of the tanks have been completed, while other technical issues would be taken care of by September.

The
operation of the re-cycling plant will be carefully monitored during
initial three to four months, so that modifications, if necessary, can
be introduced.