Date:21/09/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/21/stories/2007092150690100.htm

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Bids invited for Pilloor water scheme

K.V. Prasad

October 24 is last date for submission and opening of tenders
Scheme to take off in three months after finalisation of bids

COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore Corporation has invited tenders for implementing the Rs.113-crore Pilloor Phase II drinking water scheme under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission. The civic body has fixed October 24 as the last date for submission and opening of tenders.

The civic body hopes it will take off in three months since the finalisation of the bids.

The city will get more than 60 million litres a day (mld) out of the 125 mld that the proposed scheme will provide. The Phase I scheme already provides 125 mld, of which the city gets 65 mld. With the Siruvani scheme totally dependent on monsoon and the demand for water going up, the Corporation is trying to speed up the new scheme.

Corporation sources say tenders have been invited under international competitive bidding. This opens up space for participation by any agency that has experience and expertise to implement water schemes. There is already resentment in a section of the Corporation Council over not awarding the project to Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage (TWAD) Board that had implemented Phase I.

The Corporation maintains that anyone, including the water board can implement the scheme. But, it has to be only through bidding.

The plan is to lay a pre-stressed concrete pipe from the water tunnel in Periakombai Hills to the treatment plant at Velliyangadu. Since the water flows up to the plant through gravity and not pumping, the Corporation thinks a mild steel pipe need not be used.

The Corporation has invited bids specifically for the setting up of a water treatment plant (near the existing one), under ‘design-build-operate-transfer’ system.

The agency taking up this work should construct a pump house and also install the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system -- a centralised monitoring mechanism that can detect problems in the scheme’s functioning, especially problems in the supply.