The Hindu 07.09.2009
Remove water pipes from UGD manholes, contractor told
Staff Correspondent
Mayor Basavaraj gives one week time for removal
Media had exposed the health hazard last week
BELLARY: Bellary Mayor K. Basavaraj has said one week has given one week to the contractors entrusted with the work of laying roads to remove the newly-laid drinking water pipes passing through manholes of the underground drainage system (UGD).
The Mayor’s instruction follows an expose by the media that the newly-laid drinking water and the drainage pipes were running parallel to each at certain places such as Cowl Bazar and the stretch between Durgamma temple and S.P. Circle causing fear of a health hazard among residents.
“We went around the city inspecting the kind of work being turned out by the contractors and found that what the media had reported was true. Immediately, we asked the contractor to remove the drinking water pipelines passing through the manholes and avoid laying the lines parallel to each other,” Mr. Basavaraj told The Hindu.
The corporation had taken up widening of some of the main roads in the city to clear traffic congestion. The estimated cost of the project, being undertaken from Durgamma temple to Sudha Cross and from the first railway gate to the T.B. Sanitorium in Cowl Bazar, is Rs. 100 crore.
The work also provides ducts for electrical connections and other civic amenities on either side so as to avoid digging of the roads in future.
Mr. Basavaraj said that he had asked corporation officials and the Karnataka Urban Water Supply and Drainage Board to conduct an inspection and submit a report besides suggesting corrective measures to be undertaken. He had also instructed the officials to be present on the spot while the pipelines were being re-laid, he said.
Methane
Meanwhile, a senior official of the Board, while expressing concern over the manner in which the drinking water pipelines was being laid, categorically stated that drinking water pipelines should not pass through the manhole of the underground drainage system where methane, a poisonous and highly corrosive gas, is generated and affects the pipes.
