Darjeeling municipality apprehending an acute water shortage in the hill

Darjeeling, March 9.TT: The Darjeeling municipality is apprehending an acute water shortage in the hill town in the next one month.

The winter has been dry this year and the condition, the municipality fears, will persist. “We had very little rain during the winter months. The water-level is extremely low and if the present condition exists we will find it very difficult to supply water to the town people,” said municipality chairperson Amar Singh Rai. He was present yesterday at the Devi temple at Senchel, when the civic body performed a puja to invoke the water god.

Sushma Rai, the councillor in charge of the water works at the municipality, said the water-levels at the Senchel North and South lakes are much less than what they were last year at this time. “At North Lake, the water level was 16.6ft on this day last year. Today, the level is only 12.1ft. Similarly, the water-level at South Lake is 11.5ft now as against 17.3ft last year,” she said.

The North Lake has a storage capacity of 20 million gallons while the capacity of South Lake is 13 million gallons. But the reservoirs are never full and on days the water is supplied to town residents, the level comes down by two to three inches.

A third lake at Sindap, a kilometre down from the Senchel lakes, has a capacity of about 8 million gallons. But since this lake leaks, water, which is pumped from Bangal jhora near Rangbull, is hardly stored here.

Darjeeling requires a daily supply of about 15-18 lakh gallons. But on a normal day, the municipality can only supply about 7-8 lakh gallons of water.

“If we are to sufficiently supply water to the 2 lakh residents of town, we will need at least 20 lakh gallons of water on a given day,” said an official of the municipality.

What the two lakes now need is rain as they are completely dependant on Khang khola near Sonada. The khola is rain-fed.

“There are 26 streams from which water is drawn to these two lakes from Khang khola. I had gone to survey the area a couple of weeks back and I found that almost all, except four streams, had gone dry,” said Rai.

With the Darjeeling municipality almost convinced about an impending water crisis, the officials have already written to the state government for Rs 38 lakh. The figure was arrived at after considering the logistics of distributing water through tankers for the next two months till monsoon. “We are waiting for a response from the state government,” said Rai.

The much-hyped Rs 56 crore Balasun drinking water project, which was supposed to have been completed by February, is likely to be delayed by another three to four months.

“We had gone to inspect the progress of work and we believe that water from this project can only be distributed after three-four months,” said Rai.

Most of the work, including setting up a treatment plant at Sindhap, has been completed but the laying of pipes in certain areas like Ghoom-Jorebunglow is still pending.

The government has sanctioned Rs 7.07 crore for re-laying old pipes and for constructing a water reservoir in the St Paul’s area. But this has got nothing to do with the Balsun project.

The municipality believes that the town requires about Rs 155 crore to completely revamp the distribution system to ensure that the water is properly supplied to the entire town even after the Balasun project is completed. The project has been envisaged to pump water for 16 hours a day to supply 2 million gallons to Darjeeling from Balasun river, about 30km fromthe town, through two pumping stations.