Introduction

The Government of Assam is implementing the World Bank assisted Rural Water Supply & Sanitation Project in Kamrup Metro district for providing potable drinking water to the villagers in 24/ 7 model, with the support from the World Bank. This report will reflect about the aims & objective of the proposed scheme prepared incorporating the comments / observations on the preliminary report and discussions at various levels at different forums.

This Composite Water Supply Scheme for sustainability and quality in Kamrup District will be implemented in two Zones. Zone-I will cover the habitations of Chandrapur Development Block and Zone-II will cover all the habitations under Dimoria Development Block.

In zone-I , 4 nos. of existing rural water supply scheme out of 25 have already crossed 15 years of commissioning and 2 nos. are more than 30 years commissioning. All these schemes were designed for a period of 15 years with 40 lpcd level of supply. Similarly in Zone-II Out of the 105 existing schemes, 14 nos. has already crossed its life design life span i.e 15 years and 5 nos are more than 30 years old. The level of service in accordance to the need of the consumers cannot be maintained by these old schemes.

The quality affected habitation in the project area are as follows :

Affected Quality of Water	Zone-I	Zone-II
Iron affected	29	79
Fluoride affected	11	18

The concentration of fluoride level in certain areas like Mathgharia is as high as 9.2 ppm and several residents of the locality exhibits fluorosis symptoms like melting of the teeth as well as skeletal deformity is prominent amongst the children of age 6-8 years. The fractured rocky layer with discharge ranging from 7500LPH – 15000LPH is to be tapped as ground water source and inadequacy is experienced to run the scheme. Moreover, cynical behaviour of fractured zone are very often found to be too expensive.

In the context of the above, and water being a very basic need, the Public Health Engineering Department, Government of Assam has decided to go for a Large Multi village rural water supply scheme in Kamrup District under World Bank assisted RWSS-LIS project in Assam.

 Hence, it is of utmost important to switch over to alternative safe source and it is proposed to cover the entire area with water from a surface source namely River Brahmaputra and River Kolong flowing in the vicinity of the project area.

The River Kolong is flowing along the side of the command area which has substantial surface flow throughout the year to draw required quantity of water for the proposed water supply scheme even in the lean period. Average Run-off of River Kolong is 48.5 Cumec. Intake arrangement with floating barge has been considered for withdrawal of raw water from river Kolong at Singimari for Zone-I and  Amora Pathar for Zone-II respectively.

In addition to that NNP project will support the software activity for sanitation which will be carried out under world bank project areas.