In
the initial years of the city’s growth, the merchants of the East India Company
were not much interested in providing improved civic amenities to the citizens.
Some of money the Company collected by imposing taxes, duties and licenses in
Calcutta between 1690-1723 by virtue of the zamindari rights they had acquired
over the villages of Sutanuti, Kolkata and Govindpur in 1698 was put to develop
the settlements’ civic structure.
The civic services rendered by the Zamindar mainly
consisted of: water supply, drainage, cleansing of streets and street lighting.
The development activities undertaken by the Zamindar included: cutting down
the jungles in the town, bridging the watercourses, surveying the lands and
other such affairs. The provision of ‘civic amenities’ in the city was brought
under the Municipal Administration in 1727.
Calcutta had its natural drainage through the Khal (creek) that originated from the Salt Lakes in the east and joined the Hooghly
River just below the Prinsep Ghat, after meandering through Beliaghata, Sealdah, Creek Row, Dharamtollah and Government
Place North. The great cyclone of 1737 rendered this creek useless as a
watercourse for navigation.
Small surface drains had existed in the city since
1695 when a trench was dug round the Sutanuti factory. A deeper trench was
constructed in 1710 to separate the British settlement from the indigenous
settlement and keep the former dry and wholesome. The ditch ran from Lalbazaar
probably to Baboo Ghat. It was protected with drawbridges and a guardhouse — as
it basically served the defense rather than drainage purposes.
In 1742 the Maratha Ditch was constructed initially
from Baghbazar to Park Street and then extended to Alipore. This was mainly for the defense against the
Maratha raids but it served also as the grand drainage outlet for the whole
city until 1801 when it was filled up.
But the state of affairs changed for the better on
June 16, 1803. In a meeting of the “Town Improvement Committee” chaired by Lord
Wellesley, the then Governor General of Bengal, a historic initiative was
undertaken.
It was at Wellesley’s behest that the “Town Reforms
Committee” was formed for improvement of the town. Since the construction of
the public drains and watercourses of the Town was extremely defective, he
assigned great importance to the improvements of its drainage.
This led to the appointment of a Committee in 1804 to
look into the matter. This Improvement Committee, later called the Lottery
Committee, undertook extensive development work for Calcutta by constructing
roads and filling up filthy tanks in the town and excavating new ones. Beliaghata
Canal was the Lottery Committee’s permanent contribution to the city’s drainage
system.
It is reported that during the early nineteenth
century, the drains in the northern part of the town were unpaved and filthy. Coolies
were employed regularly to clean these drains manually that would overflow on
to the streets after a light rainfall as these drains had no outlet.
As a result, various proposals came up between
1835-1855 for the construction of a new drainage system in the ‘Town’:
•
The
Committee opted for an underground drainage system
•
Captain
Prinsep of the Bengal Engineers preferred a surface drainage system to carry
off the water with sinks and ash-pits for every house, to be cleansed by manually.
He strongly opposed to any scheme of underground drainage in Calcutta
•
Mr
Blechynden, proposed to drain the northern portion of the town, in which no
large drains had yet been made, either towards the river or to the east by a
large underground tunnel running from the Hooghly down Nimtala and Manicktollah
streets to the Circular Canal. The tunnel was to be flushed by the admission of
the Hooghly water
• Captain
Thomson provided for an elaborate system of large underground drains or sewers
that he proposed to flush partly by river water and partly by means of a
reservoir to be formed at the western end of the Entally Canal
•
Captain
E Forbes proposed to construct a large masonry aqueduct from the river Hooghly
at old Chitpur Bridge to the Old Park Street cemetery and link it with the Salt
Lakes by a wide-open canal nearly parallel with Entally canal. The canal was to
be connected by sluice gates with the river and lake, so that water might be
admitted or excluded from both these sources. On either side of the canal
masonry sewer or covered drain was to be constructed and linked with a system
of subsidiary drains discharging into these two main sewers all the filth and
surface drainage of the city
•
William
Clark proposed a “water-carriage system” for the town. The original report was
submitted to the Municipal Commissioners in 1855, and adopted in 1857 with some
modifications and was sanctioned in 1859. Clark’s scheme was a ‘combined
sewage-cum drainage system’. It carried off both rainfall and sewage from the Hooghly
to the Salt Lakes from where the sewage was to be pumped out. The total town
area that was covered under Clark’s Scheme amounted to 4730 acres
Clark’s Scheme comprised of
five main sewers with their branches, accessories and outfall works. Three of
the main sewers stretched from the Hooghly to the Circular Road along the Nimtala
Ghat Street, Colootola Stree and Dharamtollah Street. There were two main
intercepting sewers:
•
One
from the north, starting from Hooghly at Sova Bazaar Street running eastward to
Circular Road and continuing along Upper Circular Road to a level at Dharamtollah
junction. It intercepted the three main sewers already mentioned. Between this
Circular Road sewer and the Circular Road canal, he provided four storm-water
overflows of much larger capacity than the sewers
• The other intercepting
sewer started from Tolly’s Nullah near Zeerut Bridge, and following Lower Circular
Road to Dharamtollah junction. It discharged together with the sewer from the
north and the Dharamtollah sewer through a main outfall to Palmer’s Bridge Pumping
station in Entally, and thence into the Beliaghata Canal
to be continued
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