Puri: India’s first city with High-Quality Drinking Water from Tap

 

 

 

The initiative which provides drinking water supply adhering to ‘Quality Standards of IS 10500’ will be beneficial to Puri with a population of 2.5 lakhs. Puri, in Odisha, is a non-metro city, and the feat they have achieved is nothing short of brilliant. Puri is the native place of Lord Jagannathan and is now the first city in the country where everyone can have high-quality drinking water directly from the tap round the clock!

 

On Monday, Naveen Patnaik, the CM of Odisha, inaugurated the mission of ‘Drink from Tap’ in Puri. This initiative will provide water supply & will benefit the city’s 2.5 lakh population and also 2 crore tourists who come to visit this holy city annually. Patnaik said that there is no longer need of storing or even filtering drinking water. The special thing about this is that only a few major cities in the world have such great water facilities. The other major cities in the world who have this facility are New York City, London, Singapore and a few others.

 

The provision of this safe drinking water will also be helping avoid the unnecessary use of 3 crore plastic bottles & will eliminate 400 metric tonnes of plastic waste, hence reducing Odisha’s carbon footprint.

 

Mr. Patnaik said that the residents in Puri, pilgrims and tourists could drink water straight from the taps across the city – both at home and also from the drinking fountains. The pilgrims can use up to 120 water fountains which were set up by the state on Grand Road and many other hotspots, informed an official release.

 

As for the quality, the state is looking over strictly over the quality control of the water through a real-time surveillance which technology-based. A response team having mobile crews set up for a swift redressal of any leakage, water quality, pressure supply and a few other issues. The release also said that, the real-time quality of water will be displayed at all public through LCD screens as a way of ensuring public confidence and a mass shift from bottled water to tap water now.

 

The officials said that the underprivileged women from many self-help groups who are known as ‘Jalsaathis’ are hired and trained for jobs like meter reading, revenue collection, conducting quality checks for the field water and also to brief people about the subject.

 

Apart from Puri, the same mission is also being implemented in 16 more cities across Odisha – this covers a population of 40 lakhs, Pratap Jana said, who is the Minister of Housing & Urban Development.

 

This was a little about the amazing feat that the city of Puri has achieved. This city in India is now amongst the best and very few in the world to have high-quality drinking tap water services! This city definitely deserves applause for making this happen and making India proud! If you enjoy such interesting content, do visit the space for more!