Cumbharjua pipeline restored; water supply likely to resume by Friday

PONDA: On the eight day of the pipeline erosion, the public works department (PWD) has finally restored the eroded pipeline supplying water to Cumbharjua constituency and parts of Priol constituency on Friday. The work of erecting the concrete support to the restored pipeline was go until late night, but the PWD officials were optimistic to resume the water supply to these affected areas on Friday forenoon.
The restoration of pipeline has been completed in record time of just five hours between 8 am to 1 pm on Thursday. When asked why did they kept the work to take up after completion of Panaji-Tiswadi line despite it took almost six days, PWD officials claimed that the Panaji and surrounding people are wholly dependent on tap water, whereas the village areas covered by the 750 mm line has wells as an alternative source of water.
Explaining the difference between the time consumption for laying the pipelines, PWD executive engineer Nivruti Parsekar claimed that while the replacing of a Cast Iron (CI) pipeline with Ductile Iron (DI) is very easy, replacing the DI with Mild Steel (MS) is very difficult. MS pipelines need welding to join but the erstwhile CI pipelines and DI pipelines needs rubber rings to fit inside collar couplings.
“Of the five days of 900 mm pipeline lying, two to three days were consumed by welding process including creating necessary bends to the pipes”, Parsekar added.
Opining that using the MS pipeline as replacement to 900 mm eroded pipeline was a wrong and immature decision, people have been blaming the department for time consumed.
Responding to such complaints, Parsekar said that the height of the 900 mm pipeline was 5 m from ground at the Khandepar side and 3.5 m at Ponda side. In this condition, use of MS pipeline with the bends is recommended. “No CI or DI pipeline could bear the load of water ascending from 5 m height to 3.5 m height”, Parsekar said.