Bangalore set to get addl drinking water from Cauvery

State-owned BWSSB has completed the Rs 1,769 crore project to supply 500 mn litres per day water to suburbs of the tech city

The suburban areas around Bangalore city are set to get adequate drinking water by the first week of October as the City's much awaited drinking water project has been completed. Over two million people would get adequate clean drinking water from river Cauvery next month with the completion of an ambitious project -- Cauvery IV stage II phase -- at Thorekadanahalli in Malavalli taluk of Mandya district on Friday.

The state-owned Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB), has executed the drinking water project at an estimated cost of Rs 1,769 crore and launched the trial run on the Engineer' Day (September 15), which is celebrated in memory of legendary engineer Sir M Visvesvaraya's birth anniversary. Incidentally, Visvesvaraya himself had conceived the drinking water supply scheme for Bangalore city many decades ago.

With the completion of this project, an additional 500 million litres (MLD) of water would be supplied to the suburban areas of the tech city from October this year.

The BWSSB would soon begin the partial commissioning of the new project in the first week of October to supply 300 MLD of water from Cauvery river for the first time, which would quench the thirst of one million additional population of the city. The project would be officially commissioned in November this year.

The project is unique in many ways as it has been completed in a record time of 32 months. The BWSSB has laid 16 km long pipes with a diametre of 3,000 mm and the water will be pumped at three places in T K Halli, Harohalli and Tataguni using 10 motors of 3,100 HP. To store the water, it has built 152 million litre capacity storage tanks at seven places in Bangalore city. The total length of pipeline runs into 173 kms weighing 1,49,500 metric tons across the city.

"Our engineers have worked day and night for the last three years despite several challenges including geographical obstacles and unexpected developments like lorry strike, shortage of building materials among others to complete this project," S Suresh Kumar, minister for urban development said.