Clamour growing for raising sewage treatment plant capacity

Safilguda: The residents in and around Safilguda have been clamouring for increasing the capacity of the sewage treatment plant (STP) here. Located on the northern part of the lake, it treats 0.6 MLD (million litres per day) of sewage water per day but the lake gets 4 MLD every day. The sewage from nearby local Colonies such as Sri Krishna Nagar Colony, Balram Nagar, Sitharam Nagar, Vinayak Nagar and RK Puram Lake water enters the Safilguda Lake.

"In the year 2000, the lake was under HUDA (Hyderabad Urban Development Authority) constructed a STP. Later, it was taken over by HMDA (Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority) and in the past three years it is under the HMWSSB," said Raghavendra Rao, Deputy Engineer of HMDA,

"The STP was built during the restoration of the lake. It was built with capacity of 0.6 MLD to accommodate the existing 2MLD in 2000. If we look at the past two years, there was unexpected increase in the water coming to the lake.

Due to restoration and construction of the park at RK Pruram, the lake water from there is pumped along with sewage from nearby colonies in large quantities to the STP and lake. Here after purification of garbage and removal of waste, waster is regularly moved to the Nagole dump yard," said Karthik, the in-charge of STP at Safilguda.

"Even if we run the STP for 24 hours, only 0.6 MLD water is purified. Once the water is pumped into the pond again, they will accumulate in the surplus quantity of lake water," according to Venkat Ramulu, a junior operator.

Madhusudhan, the chief operator of STP Safilguda, said, "Recently the state government and Water Board introduced a new policy to sell STP water at Rs 125 per 5,000 litres, but they are not implementing it. If they do so, the government will get money, and the STP can be developed. The total number of workers in the STP Safilguda is 12 and per shift there will 4 members.

But we are paid meagre salaries, which are very low when compared to minimum wages law. The plant requires more workers and helpers. There are 3 pump houses, 2 at STP and 1 near the lake. At each house there are individual motors and the motors are 8 in number and in good working condition. If any pump or any damages occur in the plant, we need only carry out repairs to solve the problem."