Drainage project gains momentum, Bansdroni pumping station to open by March 2025
Telegraph | 9 November 2024
Thousands of residents from parts of Bansdroni, Bramhapur, Garia, Boral, Roynagar and Sonarpur on Calcutta’s south-eastern fringes will be relieved of their waterlogging woes once a drainage pumping station in Bansdroni’s Sitala Park becomes operational by March next year, senior officials of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) said.
The drainage and sewage pumping station will come up a few hundred metres away from a road in Bansdroni where a 15-year-old student was killed after he was hit on his head by the arm of a payloader in October.
The road, like several others big and small across four CMC wards — 111, 112, 113 and 114 — has been lying battered since 2017 when the CMC initiated a project to upgrade the drainage and sewage in the area and began laying pipes underground.
Dinesh Nagar Road was in such a poor state that the engineers decided to carry out patchwork repairs ahead of the festive season. The residents have been demanding a motorable stretch resembling a road.
The payloader was meant to lay even the road which has been dug up on multiple pockets for laying big pipes.
“The drainage and sewage pumping station will start functioning from March 2025. We have had rounds of discussions with officials of the Asian Development Bank which is funding the ₹1,200-crore project and those from KEIIP which is implementing it,” said Tarakeswar Chakraborty, chairman of borough 11, covering the wards under KMC.
“This project will benefit several lakhs of residents,” he said.
The project began in 2017, when the CMC initiated an ambitious project to upgrade the drainage and sewage of areas under four wards — 111 to 114 — in the city’s southern suburbs under the Kolkata Environmental Improvement Investment Program (KEIIP).
“The pumping station at Sitala Park would receive water from four wards, purify it and pass it to Renia canal. The water from the canal will be routed to a pumping station at Kudghat and finally to Tolly’s Nullah,” a senior KEIIP engineer said.
The frustration of the residents with the work lying incomplete for years was evident when a section of them gheraoed the officer-in-charge of the Patuli police station for close to six hours after he reached the accident site following the death of Class XI student, Soumya Sil. The officer was made to stand in a pool of slush before a police team rescued him.
With drains lying uncovered and roads dug up, residents said they had to struggle to cross the dug-up stretches during monsoon for years. A section of the residents alleged that some fell into the open drains and injured themselves, and some others suffered fractures.
“Once the pumping station starts working, the roads, lanes and bylanes will be re-laid,” a CMC official said.