Two water treatment plants are to be installed which will be able to continuously supply water.
In the first phase, a plant will supply continuous water to all offices via a pipeline for uses other than drinking, according to a plan proposed by the Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Ltd (KUKL).
A second plant will purify underground water and provide drinking water in jars to all ministries and offices in the premises.
The plants will be set up near the offices of Nepal Television and use already-existing tube wells and aquifers. This will replace the external water supply from KUKL which is currently intermittent, and wells dug near different ministries as well as supply by tankers and bottled water.
The water supply will finally change the sanitation situation in administrative headquarters of the Nepal as well as replace the external water supply and make Singha Durbar independent in water supply, Ghanashyam Bhattarai, a KUKL board member, says. Bhattarai is also the executive director of the Melamchi Water Supply Project.
The government has earmarked Rs 50 million for the purpose.
“Designs for the plant have been finalized and tender notices inviting bids for the plant will be published soon,” Mahesh Prasad Bhattarai, KUKL’s General Manager, says.
The first plant will also filter out iron and use conventional water treatment methods making it suitable for all other uses except drinking. The second plant will make the water suitable for human consumption using reverse osmosis technology.
“We chose to supply two grades of water as the cost of making all the supply drinkable would be very high,” KUKL GM Bhattarai says.
The underground water in the aquifers under Singha Durbar contains high ammonia and therefore needs complete purification before being suitable for drinking, according to technicians at KUKL. Data on the exact amount of water Singha Durbar uses today and how much it needs in total for all the purposes was not available.
The move comes even as uncertainty looms over the progress and future of a long-drawn project to supply the Kathmandu Valley with water from the Melamchi River as no new completion dates have been set after it became evident the project was going to miss its end of April 2016 deadline.
Soon after assuming office in Singha Durbar on October 2015, Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli had issued two important directions: make Singha Durbar independent in energy and water supply by installing solar-electricity systems and water treatment plants.
There has not been any progress in setting up of the solar system in the premise as the Ministry of Energy has been waiting for work from the Chinese government which revised its feasibility study after the earthquake. MoE says it has not yet received any report on the matter.
Other plans in KUKL’s to do list for this year include filling up Ranipokhari using treated water from a tube well in Ratna Park, controlling leakage, and finding a new source for water.
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