The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Desalination plant: Bidders seek more time

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 19, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Desalination plant: Bidders seek more time

By T. Ramakrishnan

CHENNAI, JAN. 18. The December 26 tsunami has forced several prospective bidders for Chennai Metrowater's desalination project to seek extension of time for submitting tenders.

The rationale behind their demand is that quality of seawater and terrain profile of the sea would, among others, have changesd in the wake of the tsunami.

Companies that have bought the tender documents now want time to study the changes, sources say. As on date, the due date for opening of the documents is January 27.

Asked about the demand of the prospective bidders, an official of the city's water agency says that already, it once extended the deadline. Originally, the due date was on December 24. As some of the companies had even then requested the authorities for extension of the date, the establishment had conceded to their demand. "Any decision on further extension has to be taken on the advice of the Government," says the official.

So far, 37 companies have purchased bid documents. The bids have been floated for the proposed desalination plant at Minjur, on the northern outskirts of the city.

The plant, with a capacity of 100-200 million litres a day (MLD), will be operated using seawater. It is to be established through the design, build, own, operate and transfer (DBOOT) mode.

Though the project is to be implemented on the DBOOT mode, Metrowater feels that parameters will have to be drawn up for assessment of design and other related aspects of the proposed plant. For laying down the parameters, the services of the National Institute of Ocean Technology will be used.

The NIOT has indicated to the water agency that it would take up the work shortly and complete it in a period of six to eight weeks.

Storage position

Meanwhile, the combined storage of city reservoirs --Red Hills, Cholavaram and Satyamurti Sagar at Poondi--stood at 2,146 million cubic feet. Chembarampakkam, used for supplementing the city supply, had a storage of 334 mcft. Water from the Veeranam tank in Cuddalore district was being drawn for sustaining the supply. About 570 cubic feet per second (cusecs) was being used from this tank, of which 77 cusecs was for Chennai.

In terms of million litres a day (MLD), this meant 180 MLD for the city.

The Zero Point, on the Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh border, recorded an inflow of about 400 cusecs of Krishna water. So far, about 1,600 mcft of water was realised by Tamil Nadu.

At present, water managers are maintaining the supply on alternative days. In a block of two days, about 630 million litres is supplied, of which 450 million litres is given on "supply days."

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