As the month of June passed with almost no rains, the BMC announced 10 per cent water cuts across the city from July 1. It is now September and the city is still facing water cuts; there are no signs of the cuts being withdrawn in the near future. Furthermore, just three years after the last major water crisis in the city — it seems to be on the brink of another one. Last year, the BMC spent `2,599 crore on water supply projects, while this year, it has allocated `2,479 crore for water supply and sewerage projects.
Even though the citizens can weather the 10 per cent water cuts due to the sudden re-emergent monsoons, but the situation can become difficult to manage if the rains continue playing truant.
Mumbai had faced a similar water crisis in 2009, when the BMC had imposed 30 per cent water cuts throughout the city. The civic body received several suggestions that could end the city’s water woes — one of them was desalination of seawater. Today, the BMC has scrapped the plan to invest in the plant and will consider it only if private investors comes forward.
Additional municipal comissioner Rajiv Jalota said, “We were banking upon the Centre’s assistance to set up desalination plants as the BMC cannot just start them on its own, due to its expensive nature. The high cost of `70 for every 1,000 litre of desalination would also be too expensive for common people.”
Now consider this: A city like Chennai also has three desalination plants — each of 100 million-litre capacity. They even managed to get financial assistance of from the Centre. However, the BMC officials, despite making several attempts, have failed to convince the Centre about the necessity of this project for Mumbai, which has a population of over 1.5 crore.
Interestingly, while the project cannot take off owing to the “high cost”, political leaders of the city keep undertaking foreign junkets to “study” these plans abroad. This year, mayor Sunil Prabhu, standing committee chairman Rahul Shewale, Opposition leader Dnyanaraj Nikam, and others visited Singapore in July.
But it is not just desalination that has made its way into the BMC jargon. Words like cloud seeding, rainwater harvesting, grey water recycling (wastewater generated from domestic activities such as laundry, dishwashing, and bathing, which can be recycled) are all doing the rounds of BMC corridors, but these measures failed to take off successfully in 2009, and the present scenario see-ms equally non-conducive for them to be successful.
Take for instance the shining example of BMC’s indecisiveness — cloud seeding. Despite making initial forays, the civic body is still dithering over whether to carry out the experiment, which induces artificial rains into lake catchment areas. By the time it makes up its mind, there is every possibility that the clouds will be gone and the BMC will be left ruing over another lost chance.
Expert Shantilal Meckoni, who conducted the ground cloud seeding experiment in 2009, emphasised on meticulous planning to carry out such trials. “You have to take into account all aspects like cloud cover, thickness, moisture, and velocity required to hit clouds. For this, proper preparation and coordination with weather experts is required,” he said.
In 2009, the civic body implemented both manual as well as aerial methods and spent `8.15 crore, however, both these methods failed to produce the desired results.
This year, the BMC has appointed the Israeli company Mekorot to carry out aerial cloud seeding in the catchment areas of Bhatsa and Vaitarana lakes, but as Mekorot has now expressed its inability to provide the aircraft, the civic body has decided to hire aircraft from South African company Orsm-ond Aviation. Mekorot will now only provide the technical support, but this has resulted in skyrocketing the cost of the project to a whopping `20 crore.
“Even after spending this amount, there is no guarantee of success. Surprisingly, the estimates of cloud seeding are also dubious. An American company had expressed interest to carry out cloud seeding along with technical expertise to conduct these experiments at less than half the cost. The huge difference between estimates of the same experiment baffles me,” said Mr Nikam.
Other projects like rainwater harvesting, greywater recycling, borewells and ringwells have failed miserably due to lack of planning of civic officials.
The harvesting system includes conservation of rainwater in big tanks, which can be used for sundry household purposes. In 2002, it was made mandatory in new buildings with an area of more than 1,000 sq mt area; in 2007, it were modified to include buildings with even 300 sq mt area, but according to statistics released by the BMC’s water department in June this year, it does not seem to have panned out as planned. Out of 6,855 new buildings in the city, 3,847 do not have rainwater harvesting. “It has failed to evoke a positive response from the developers and housing societies due to its costly nature,” said standing committee chairman Rahul Shewale.
As far as greywater recycling is concerned, the civic body has been planning to make recycling in all housing, commercial and industrial premises compulsory for last three years. Everyday, about 2,600 million-litre of greywater is generated. “In countries like Singapore, this water is used even for drinking purposes after recycling. If used for purposes like gardening, washing, it can result in conservation of lakhs of litres,” said former Shiv Sena corporator Manmohan Chonkar.
To simultaneously tackle the problem of sewerage treatment, the BMC had shortlisted seven sites — Colaba, Worli, Ghatkopar, Bandra, Versova, Malad and Bhandup — in 2009 to set up sewerage treatment plants at an estimated cost of `4,000 crore. However, barring two plants at Worli and Bandra, all other plants have been entangled in environmental and other issues.
The BMC also had to discontinue the project of digging up borewells due to indiscriminate drawing of ground water. In 2009, the civic body dug up 525 borewells to mitigate the water crisis. However, the data collated by 16 ward offices says that around 125 borewells with electrical pumps and 145 with hand pumps are not in a working condition. Now, in light of the looming water crisis, the civic body has just decided to repair them.
Water activists are, however, livid over the BMC’s many wasted attempts to tackle the water problems. “Do they really want water shortage to end?” said Sitaram Shelar of Pani Bachao Andolan. “Instead of solving the crux of the problem, BMC politicians and top civic officials are chasing projects like desalination and cloud seeding, which are costly and time-consuming. The nexus between politicians and officials has been minting money on these reserves, and civic engineers get blamed for no results.”
He added, “More than 20 per cent of water supply is frittered away due to leakages and pilferage. The BMC has not been able to stop this. Instead of relying on its own staff, it has appointed contractors to repair them, but these contractors are looting the BMC by presenting fake bills. The civic body’s leak detection cell was shut down a few years ago and has not been revived yet.”
Looking back, the BMC realised long ago that relying on rainwater would be too risky, and so attempted to plan for alternatives to conserve and procure more water, but with decent rainfall in the last two years, all these plans were forgotten in a hurry.
This year too, heavy rainfall for two to three days, even in the month of September, could change the entire scenario. However, if it doesn’t happen, then bigger water cuts are imminent. It might be well worth the BMC’s while to reassemble those forgotten plans and see them through.