GUNTUR: The water reservoir at Gorantla whose construction is underway is going to put an end to the long pending drinking water woes of people in merged villages of Guntur Municipal Corporation (GMC).
In 2010, around 10 villages were merged with GMC, including Gorantla, Reddypalem, Pedapalakaluru, Nallapadu, Chowdavaram, Naidupet, Potturu, Ankireddypalem, Etukuru and Budampadu. Since then, the civic body has been providing drinking water through water tankers, which is barely adequate for the villagers.
For the past decade, the people in these villages and in the tail end of the city are suffering due to inadequate drinking water supply and the situation is worse during summer. Currently, the estimated population of the city is around 10 lakh and about 125 million gallons of water are being supplied to the people each day, which is far from sufficient.
In order to resolve the water problems, the officials are making proposals to increase the capacity of Sangam Jagarlamudi Head Waterworks from which the entire city gets water. Along with this, in 2019, under the AMRUT (Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation) scheme, a drinking water project was initiated at Gorantla with a sum of Rs 33 crore.
The 53 MLD project, includes a 10 km pipeline and two reservoirs, one with 600 kl and another with 4,200 kl capacity. About 2.34 lakh people will get benefitted from this project.
The project got delayed due to various reasons, including delay in getting required permissions, unavailability of suitable land and the Covid-19 pandemic. With GMC Commissioner Kirthi Chekuri’s initiatives, the works gained pace a couple of months back. While the two reservoirs are almost completed, the laying of pipelines of head water works in Pandulavari Colony is under progress.
The civic body chief instructed the town planning and engineering department officials to speed up the pending works and finish them as soon as possible. The villagers are waiting for the project to be completed and are hoping that they will get sufficient drinking water.