Howrah water crisis: Supply to be restored today after completion of pipeline work
Telegraph | 24 March 2025
A new pipeline to supply potable water to north Howrah was completed on Sunday morning and normal supply will be restored across Howrah from Monday, the chairperson of the board of administrators of Howrah Municipal Corporation said on Sunday.
Water supply to large parts of Howrah was severely affected from Thursday morning till Friday evening after a pipeline from the Puddapukur water treatment plant was damaged. Supply to central Howrah was restored on Friday evening, but water supply to north Howrah could not be restored.
The pipeline was damaged after a hillock of waste at the Belgachhia waste disposal ground caved in.
Over the next two days, the roads and several houses around the waste disposal ground developed cracks or collapsed.
A senior official of the Howrah district administration said over 30 houses have been damaged. The residents have been shifted to a school in the area as a temporary measure.
“North Howrah will get water from Monday morning. The Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) was able to connect a new line that will bypass the damaged supply line. This new pipeline was built a few months ago but it was never connected to the supply network. The KMDA managed to link it in three days,” said Sujay Chakravarty, the chairperson of the board of administrators of HMC.
The HMC does not have an elected board since 2018.
“The newly connected line has to be washed and the reservoirs from where water is supplied to neighbourhoods have to be filled. This will take some time. We will be able to restore normal supply from Monday morning,” said Chakravarty.
Buddha Paswan, whose hutment collapsed, said eight family members were now living in the school.
“There were cracks in many of the houses for many days. These cracks developed over many months. We had informed the authorities, but they never cared about what we said,” said Paswan.
Most of the houses damaged or that were under threat were hutments with brick walls and tiled roofs. These homes are located on the periphery of the Belgachhia waste disposal ground.
Residents of most of the hutsmen echoed Paswan. The cracks have been ignored for long, they said.
On Sunday afternoon, a meeting with senior officials of the HMC and the district administration was held in the office of Howrah’s district magistrate.
A team of professors from Jadavpur University, who inspected the waste disposal ground, were also present in the meeting.
“The JU team has suggested some measures that we will execute. We will do sheet piling and bulla piling around the hillocks of waste. They have also suggested that the height of the hillocks be reduced immediately to reduce the pressure on the ground,” said P. Deepap Priya, the district magistrate of Howrah.
There were three hillocks on the ground and one has been cleared already by an ongoing biomining project, she said.
The KMDA is executing the biomining project at the Belgachhia waste disposal ground.
Biomining means mining legacy waste to segregate items that can be recycled, which in turn helps in reducing the volume of the waste and creates new space in a place that had been exhausted.
“The two hillocks are between 40 and 45 metre in height. The JU team said ideally it should be half that height. We have asked the KMDA to speed up the biomining work so that the height can be reduced faster,” said Deepap Priya.