Kolkata civic body to ask for water use estimate with the housing plan

It will be mandatory for the developers of big residential projects to provide an estimation of the water requirement — both during construction and possession to Kolkata Municipal Corporation to get sanctions.

The KMC board of administrators chairman Firhad Hakim said the civic body requires the data to estimate the water demand so that they can also plan the augmentation of their drinking water infrastructure to ensure demand-supply parity. The data will also assist the drainage department to plan its capacity augmentation.

“We will take an undertaking from the developers that they will assist us financially for a drainage development project meant for the users of their residential projects,” said a KMC sewerage and drainage department senior official.

Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India (CREDAI) President (Bengal chapter) Nandu Belani said the developers would comply with KMC norms.

KMC has been assessing the water demand of residents in existing residential complexes that currently fetch water from borewells and don’t have a piped water supply from the civic body.

The problem mainly observed along the EM Bypass, where several high-rises have come up in the past two decades and several more are either under construction or will be developed shortly. Even though the Jai Hind waterworks in Dhapa has commenced supplying water to some areas, the vast segments of the population and several multi-storey residential complexes don’t use the water supplied by KMC.