Bisalpur-Jaipur Pure Drinking Water Suppy Project
There has been lot of construction work going on roads in pink city these days. Many foreign tourists have wandered about whats the mess about. Actually the foundation of this present construction was laid way back.
In December 1999, ie almost 10 years ago, the foundation stone for the Bisalpur-Jaipur Water Supply Project (BWSP) was laid.
After a long wait, finally on Sunday, March 01’09, the Chief Minister, Shri Ashok Gehlot opened the valves at Malyviya Nagar water store. The water came swiftly from Bisalpur and will be now distributed across the city. With the inauguration of this project, Jaipur has become the second largest city in India, that will be supplied pure drinking water from outside.
Bisalpur Project – A Blessing for Jaipurities
Bilaspur Water project, that solves the drinking water problem of jaipur, is now about to complete and will take 3-4 more days for proper supply. The project will supply water from the existing Bisalpur dam and reservoir (located on the Banas river, about 106 kilometres south west of Jaipur city) up to Balawala, from where potable water will be supplied through supply systems in Jaipur and nearby rural areas.
The project aims at supplying potable water to nearly 53 lakh people in major settlement areas of the city till 2021. In the initial phase, water will be supplied to Malviya Nagar and Mansarovar. Durgapura area will also get water from March onwards.
Role of PHED in Bisalpur-Jaipur project
Public health and engineering department(PHED) has charted out time bound programme to connect the whole city with Bisalpur water supply. The project is being completed in two phases — transmission and transfer. The transmission part being financed by Asian Development Bank, while transfer is supported by the Japan International Corporation agency
According to experts, the operation and maintenance cost of supplying the water to the city will be around Rs200 crore per year.
Currently, the PHED incurs around Rs90 crore for water supply, while getting a paltry amount of Rs20 crore as revenue from consumers. Almost 97% of city population depends on ground water resources for potable water supply. Consequently, the water table throughout the city area has been depleting drastically over the past three decades at an alarming rate.
