Though Bhubaneswar is in the race to be among the top 20 Smart City list, ironically only 40 per cent of the city has underground sewage network while in the remaining areas it flows through open drains.
The city has only one sewage treatment plant with a capacity of 115 MlD but in practice, it treats 40 MlD water and the rest is untreated.
To standardize safe drinking water connection, the State Government has instructed the Public Health Engineering Organisation (PHEO) to organize a special drive for regularizing unauthorized water supply connection under the BMC.
This was revealed on Monday in the planning meeting by the Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) Department. The department conducted a detailed survey of the city. The H&UD Department has instructed the PHEO to organize the drive for a month from December 22. The drive aims to ensure universal access to safe drinking water to all citizens, including all households in urban local bodies (UlB) and landless people in the city, H&UD Secretary G Mathi Vathanan said.
The work should focus on three main points such as efficient water supply system, improving treatment of solid waste and strengthening sewage treating capacity system.
It will help make Bhubaneswar a Smart City. A simplification procedure has been adopted to meet the twin objective of eliminating illegal connections and increasing the number of household connections of pipe water in the UlB. This being a top priority, a special drive for one month from December 22 to January 21 will be undertaken to regularize unauthorized connections, he added.