Kolkata: T
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Tala Tank
As in 2024
Saikat Ray, April 14, 2024: The Times of India
Per FIFA, a football field should be 105m long and 68m wide. So, just imagine an overhead water tank that’s 100m by 100m (the depth of its water chambers is 18 feet). Huge, right?
Now, add to that the following: the tank has been in operation for 113 years, holds about 36,000 tonnes of water that caters to 50 lakh people, one third of the 1.5 crore population of a major city, its restoration cost was Rs 100 crore, the job took seven years and 3,600 tonnes of steel, and repainting just the outer sides needed 1.3 lakh litres of paint.
Never heard of it? Likely you don’t live in Kolkata. Tala Tank is one of the city’s major landmarks, the world’s largest overhead tank made of mild steel. It’s a part of the city’s identity, as integral to Kolkata stories as the maidan and Victoria Memorial. Like that white monument built to honour a queen, Tala Tank was built by colonial Brits, in 1911. It’s served the city ever since, never malfunctioned, and the first major overhaul in more than 100 years finished recently.
The Tala story is as fascinating as the tank’s dimensions are awe-inspiring. The steel used was the same that went into building the Titanic. The ship, famously, sank. The tank, which obviously didn’t meet an iceberg, has nonetheless weathered 113 years, standing – 120 ft high, base to top – on a large patch of land donated in early 20th century by local philanthropist Babu Khelat Ghosh (‘Babu’ was the social marker conferred by Brits to native bhadraloks of substantial means.
The 7 bighas (roughly 4.4 acres) of land Ghosh donated was big enough to accommodate an idea two Brits had in early 1900s – a gigantic water tank for what was then British India’s capital city, Calcutta. Calcutta Corporation assistant engineer Arthur Pierce came up with a solution to the city’s water supply problem. The corporation’s chief engineer, W B MacCabe, came up with the design in 1902.
Materials for building a huge water tank came from around the British empire. Especially important were quality wood from Burma (now Myanmar) and special anti-corrosive steel plates from Middlesbrough, England. Fabrication works were carried out on-site. Clayton, Son and Co of Leeds, England, got the job. The construction work was completed by January 12, 1911.
North Calcutta and bits of South Calcutta are dependent on Tala water. Kolkata Municipal Corporation employs 300 people to run the tank that has four underground water chambers. Five heavy-duty pumps lift water to the overhead tank. In peak summer, four more pumps are deployed.
Repair works were first mooted, in 2016, by experts in IIT Kharagpur and Jadavpur University who flagged structural weaknesses that had built up in the centuryold tank. Work started in 2017, but first Covid and then Cyclone Amphan delayed the massive project.
Much of the Rs 100 crore was spent on special-purpose materials: high-grade steel, anti-corrosive, UV-resistant paint for the exterior and food-grade paint for the interiors of the tank as well as the underground water chambers.
Fittingly, perhaps, repairs were carried out by Bridge & Roof Co – a 104-yearold public sector company set up in 1920, nine years after Tala Tank was built. KMC officials are confident the strengthened Tala Tank is now good to go for another 100 years.
The tank has witnessed the demise of an empire, the birth of a republic, communism of all shades, served an agitation-prone and argumentative city that prides itself for its contribution to Indian arts.
Kolkata may yet change. But it’s a safe bet that whatever the city’s future, Tala Tank will be a part of it.
