Water woes: Huda seeks discom’s help

Gurgaon: Huda has urged power discom DHBVN to restore normal power supply at the Basai water treatment plant to end the water crisis in some of the most upscale colonies of Gurgaon. Huda's letter to the Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam (DHBVN) comes after residents of DLF Phase 1, Sushant Lok 1, Nirvana Country, South City 2 and societies in sectors 49 and 50 threatened to hit the streets in protest after water supply was reduced to a trickle on Saturday and Sunday, with some areas receiving water for only 15 minutes.
Huda officials said the shortfall has been caused by outages and voltage fluctuations at the Basai treatment plant, due to which the plant developed snags and could not function to its full capacity. "We are getting adequate raw water through NCR and GWS (Gurgaon water supply) channel from Sonipat, but disruption in power supply is affecting the operation at water treatment plants leading to crisis in some parts of the city," said a senior Huda official.
In the letter to the DHBVN, the development authority highlighted that since May 11, there have been frequent voltage fluctuations, with supply being disrupted for up to seven hours. "Due to low voltage at Basai, the motors could not run for the required period of time and this in turn affected water supply in some parts of the city," the letter said.
Officials said the Basai treatment plant supplies 60MGD (million gallons per day), which is more than 70% of the city's needs. It is supposed to function round-the-clock to be able to cater to requirements, but the disruptions have reduced its treatment capacity by 50%. "Even after the power supply gets restored, it takes around three hours to restart the treatment plant. So, on some occasions, the treatment plant could not function for 10-12 hours," said the official.
The discom officials, on their part, said they were trying their best to normalise supply soon, but it may take some time as the heatwave has shot up the demand for power and the city's power infrastructure was not equipped for it. The Basai treatment plant gets power from two feeders of 11kV (kilo Volts) each. While one feeder gets power from a substation in Sector 10A, the other gets power from a substation in Daultabad. "Due to overload on the substation, these feeders trip regularly and disrupt the power supply," a DHBVN official said, adding that it then takes a few hours to restart the feeder and restore power supply.
"We are trying hard to normalise the power supply, but the problem is the power infrastructure of the city is not equipped to deal with such a heavy power load," a DHBVN official said. He said infrastructure upgrade was on way and would take some time.