Gurgaon: Water supply in several parts of the city will be affected for 48 hours from Sept 30 as GMDA connects the existing network to Sector 72 boosting station, shifting part of the supply load from Sector 51 station.The work will begin at 9 am on Sept 30 and continue till 9 am on Oct 2, during which the master water supply from Sector 51 boosting station will be partially shut down, GMDA officials said.Sectors 47 to 51, Sectors 57 to 75 and Badshapur village are likely to be affected. GMDA has advised residents in these areas to use water judiciously from Sept 29 to Oct 2 to avoid a dry spell during the shutdown.“The work involves connecting the existing water supply network at Almeda Chowk to a 1,500-mm pipeline linked to the Sector 72 boosting station. Once commissioned, the station will supply sectors 58 to 74, reducing load on the Sector 51 system, and allow the station to solely serve to the area it was designed for,” an official said.The commissioning of the boosting station is expected to be on Oct 2.“We are trying to complete the commissioning before the shutdown is over so that the supply to the area can be started immediately,” the official said.The commissioning of the station has been delayed for a long time. The foundation of this boosting station was laid in June 2019, with completion initially targeted within nine months. However, work slowed during the Covid-19 pandemic and was further impacted by annual construction bans across NCR.While the construction of the station was completed in 2022, the second phase, involving installation of machinery, began in Feb that year with a 12-month deadline. Progress was again hit due to the unavailability of land for a 500-metre stretch required for laying inlet and outlet pipelines between Chandu Budhera and the boosting station.To work around this, GMDA revised the alignment and laid around 650 metres of pipeline between Fazilpur Road and Sector 71.The project also faced a fresh hurdle when NHAI halted pipeline work beneath Dwarka Expressway after cavities were detected along the stretch, stalling work for nearly two months. The work was allowed to resume in Dec last year after clearance from the authority.In addition, there were multiple missing links and leakages detected along the 20km-long pipeline between Chandu Budhera water treatment plant and the boosting station during the testing, which hampered its completion.This boosting station is significant for residents in the new sectors along Southern Peripheral Road (SPR), since most of them face irregular water supply.Currently, these sectors remain dependent on Sector 51 station and it fails to meet peak demand during summer, forcing several residential societies to rely on private water tankers.Sector 72 boosting station has an overall capacity of 283 million litres per day (MLD).“Although the current requirement of the area is around 100 MLD, a significant portion of the area beyond Sector 74 is yet to be fully developed, so the capacity will cater to the future requirement as well,” the official said.GMDA officials said commissioning-related work at Sector 72 boosting station has largely been completed. Water had been filled in the station’s tank as part of testing, following which dewatering and cleaning of the facilities is being carried out. The cleaning work is expected to take another one to two days before the station begins its operation.
