Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami paid a courtesy call on Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi. During the meeting, the Chief Minister requested the Union Finance Minister to finance an amount of 1774 crores for the Song Dam drinking water project under the special assistance of the Government of India for capital expenditure. He said that this project would solve the drinking water problem of Dehradun.
The Chief Minister said that in Dehradun city and its suburbs, drinking water is being arranged mainly through tube wells, as a result of which the ground water level is continuously declining. Due to the increasing population of Dehradun, the demand for drinking water is continuously increasing rapidly, due to which the present drinking water supply system will not be able to meet the future drinking water demand. In view of this problem and to provide continuous drinking water facility in future, ‘Saung Dam Drinking Water Project’ is proposed on Saug river, a tributary of river Ganga. The total cost of the proposed project is Rs.2021 crore.
The Chief Minister said that with the construction of the project, 150 M.L.D. Drinking water will be available to about 10 lakh population of Dehradun city and its suburban areas through ‘Gurutva’. After the construction of the project, the dependence on tube wells for drinking water system will almost end, due to which there will be a huge reduction in groundwater exploitation, as a result of which there will be an increase in the ground water level, there will be a reduction in the emission of green house gases and in future new tube wells and operations on them will be reduced. There will also be a huge reduction in maintenance related expenditure. Apart from this, the construction of the project will create a lake, which will promote tourism in the area, which will generate employment and increase the income of local citizens. The environment will also benefit from the construction of the lake. Another main advantage of this project is post-control, as a result of the construction of the project, about 15000 population of 10 villages of Dehradun district will be provided protection from annual flood in Saung river. The project is very important for the water supply of Dehradun city, all necessary technical forest land transfer stage-1 and other necessary approvals related to the project have been received from the concerned departments/ministries. The expenditure (Rs. 247 crore) for the rehabilitation and resettlement of the families affected by the project will be borne by the State Government.
