Highly ambitious water grid project on Ganga and Son rivers has received the much needed fillip since the Center had green signaled it about a month ago. The expert committee from IIT-Rurkee has submitted its report and now the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DWSD) is on the verge of examining technical bids submitted by the firms of international and national repute for building the river grids in Jharkhand.
Information accessed by The Pioneer suggests that five companies have shown interest into the multi-crore project which would cover as many as 14 districts of the State. ‘CDM Constructors’ from the USA and ‘Aegis Consulting’ of France are from outside while indigenous engineering consultancy firms like ‘Tata Consulting Engineers’, ‘RV Consultants’, Hyderabad and ‘Mecon’ are also in the race.
“We have got the report from IIT-Rurkee and about to hold a meeting which would evaluate the bids submitted for building the water grid. It may take place within a week. The selected firm would be preparing ‘project feasibility report’ (PFR) and later the ‘detailed project report’ (DPR) for the approval of the Government of India,” said Sanjay Jha, an engineer associated with the Project Management Unit (PMU) of the Department.
The firm selected would have to submit a DPR within 15 months which would have detailed survey of each of the 14 districts the grid would cover. Considering the difficult terrains of the State, the technical and topographical study would be of great importance in making the project a successful one, said the official.
Six districts namely Palamau, Garhwa, latehar, Chatra, Hazaribagh and Ramgarh have to be covered under Son grid while eight others-- Sahibganj, Dumka, Deoghar, Godda, Pakur, Giridih, Koderma and Jamtara have planned to get the river water from the Ganga.
“For Ganga the entry point would be in Rajmahal while for Son it would be at UP-Jharkhand border. Whole purpose is to make Jharkhand safer form drought like situation and also minimally dependent on the ground water. We have selected these two rivers as the several others are rain-fed while Damodar is heavily polluted,” said Sameer Kumar Dawn, Chief Engineer of the PMU.
The Center under National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) has already provided Rs 30 lakh as initial amount for project formulation to Jharkhand and set to share half the cost coming on completion of the water grid project. Estimated cost of the project would be more than Rs 14,000 crore which, if meets all its timelines, may start in 2016.
“We have at present just 10 per cent coverage in the form of piped connection to the households of Jharkhand. Our plan is to take it up to 25 to 30 per cent in five to six years. This can be done with the water grid project only which would tap ample surface water instead of ground water. We are doing away with tubewells,” said Sudhir Prasad, Principal Secretary of DWSD.
It is worth mentioning here that the Government has put near complete ban on digging fresh handpumps and just continuing with repair works of the existing ones. Jharkhand already falls in the zone of high exploitation of ground water for drinking purposes wherein as against average of one handpump on 250 persons nationally it is 70 in the State.
The PFR presented by the selected firm would be sent to GoI for approval. This would then involve funding agencies such as World Bank, Japan’s JICA and Asian Development Fund for financing. Efforts are also to make the project completely hi-tech. Besides using local surface water of the passing districts it would also apply SCADA automation for the web based total control, starting from water supply to various other managements related from a control room based in Ranchi.