Since April 10, the steel city has been reeling under water crisis. Hardly are the residents getting water once in every 3-4 days. Meanwhile, due to war footing efforts under the direct guidance of its CEO Ashwini Kumar, the situation has improved and the steel city denizens are a bit relieved.
There is acute depletion of water in the river Koel which is the only source of water for most of the sectors in the steel city. As a result, the residents are in the grip of a severe water crisis. To tackle the situation, water supply has been regulated and made once every two days. The residents were requested to store water for consumption for 2-3 days to take care of any exigency. In some very hard hit localities, supply through tankers was started.
Besides, the management of Rourkela Steel Plant initiated several other measures on a war footing. Action was taken to increase the number of tube wells and also to dig deep bore wells at suitable centralised locations. Excavation was started in the Koel river bed to accumulate more quantity of water near the intake well at Sector-20.
A Control Room manned 24 hours by key resource persons was set up in Water Supply Town.
The facilities at Tarkera pump house could only cater to the steel plant and a few sectors through the Brahmani water works situated in Sector-8. It did not have the capacity for meeting the extra demand for both drawal and evacuation. Through a well planned and focussed approach several modifications were incorporated to tackle the problem and cater to the need of more sectors.
All the pumps at Tarkera were put into operation with increased evacuation facility. 22 water tankers have been put in to operation for distribution of potable water as per the receipt of complaints at Control Room.