Baje: Water pumping process begins

Udupi: In order to provide water to the city, the Municipality Commissioner and other officials have pitted their tents near Baje dam. Although the process of pumping out water was supposed to have started on Sunday, it was delayed due to unforeseen reasons. The officials were at the dam till almost 11:30 pm Monday night. On Tuesday, the water pumping began at 10:30 am in the morning at Brahmaragundi area of Bhandarybettu.

2 boats and 3 pump sets of 125 hp capacity each are being used to pump out the water. Close to 12 labourers are involved in this work. This process will run continuously day and night.

Supply from today

The process of pumping out the water will continue ceaselessly till the commencement of monsoon. The presently available water is enough for around 20 to 25 days. Tap water will be provided from today at Kalmnady, Kodavuru and Palekatte areas. Soon after the process of water pumping begins in Puttige area, necessary information will be available regarding the supply of water to other areas, informed engineer Ganesh.

Desilting will provide water for 4 years

10-15 feet of silt has been deposited in and around the dam and the cause for this is that, no desilting has been conducted here since the last 20 years. If the district administration gives the permission for desilting along with the process of pumping out water, then Udupi will not face water shortage for another 4 years at least, inform the locals.

1 lakh liters of water per hour

The process of pumping out the water was conducted on Tuesday morning using 2 pumps. At around 6pm in the evening, another pump was pressed into service. Through these pump, I lakh liters of water is pumped and supplied to the pump at Baje dam every hour.

People’s cooperation necessary

Garbage and wastage has been dumped at Baje dam and Bhandarybettu areas, therefore awareness amongst the people is required, urge the locals.

Udupi MLA K Raghupati Bhat visited Baje dam on Tuesday ad discussed the situation with the officials there.  Municipality members Prabhakar Poojary, Girish Anchan, Manjunath Manipal, Giridhar Acharya, Chandrashekhar Karamballi were present.

From when will there be continuous water supply?

Before March 24^th, there was 24×7 water supply to the city. Later, it was limited to once in three days. Daya by day, even if 4-5 days had passed there was no water supply. Realizing the demands from the people, the municipality has woken up. We are providing water as per availability, inform municipality officials.