As ranges within the lakes that offer water to Mumbai plunged to five% this summer season for the primary time since 2019, town’s municipal company has dusted off plans to construct a dam on the Gargai river in Wada taluka of Palghar district, north of town. The venture had been shelved as a result of it would submerge round 840 hectares of forest land.
The Brihanmumbai Municipal Company can also be expediting plans to construct a desalination plant, a dam in Palghar’s Jawhar taluka and to hyperlink the Damanganga and Pinjal rivers by setting up two dams and tunnels to deliver water from Gujarat.
These capital-intensive tasks costing greater than Rs 22,477 crore purpose to ship a further 3,200 million litres per day. Mumbai presently receives 3,850 million litres of water a day however by 2041 is estimated to wish 5,940 MLD.
Nevertheless, these projections are overestimated and have to be scrutinised for his or her validity. The problem that actually must be addressed is to effectively handle the water already inside the metropolis’s distribution community.
The estimates for a way a lot water Mumbai will want assumes that by 2041, not less than 95% of town’s inhabitants will reside in deliberate settlements (non-slums) and can use 240 litres per capita per day for home consumption alone. The remaining 5% of the inhabitants residing in slums will should be provided 150 lpcd.
However that is an overestimate.
To start with, the per capita home demand of 240 lpcd for deliberate settlements is far larger than the Ministry of Housing and City Affairs’s prescription of 150 lpcd for metro cities. Second, the demand of 150 lpcd for slum residents is excessive, contemplating the dearth of storage areas in casual settlements and particular person flushed bogs.
Additional, contemplating that round half of Mumbai’s inhabitants now lives in slums, assuming that the inhabitants of individuals in casual settlements shall be 5% by 2041 is unrealistic. In addition to, the projections for 2041 put the non-domestic water demand by industrial, business and institutional customers at 540 MLD.
Nevertheless, the info exhibits that after the Nineteen Eighties, the non-domestic water demand in Mumbai decreased considerably and has stagnated round 300 MLD-350 MLD as a consequence of water-consuming industries shifting out of town.
The first problem with the water provide in Mumbai is managing water within the distribution community. There isn’t a scarcity of water on the metropolis stage. The information exhibits that within the final six many years, the city-level water availability has at all times been greater than 250 lpcd. As per the regional plan of the Mumbai Metropolitan Area launched in 2021, town is provided with 252 lpcd, excluding water for industrial use. This water is adequate to satisfy the present water demand. Nevertheless, the problem is to distribute this water equitably throughout town.
Town’s outdated and leaky distribution community has a number of persistent issues: low strain that limits the quantity of water delivered on the faucet, inadequate hours of water provide, generally at odd hours and obvious theft. Town loses 34% of its water provide yearly – equal to 4 months of provide
To successfully handle town’s water, Mumbai’s distribution community must be divided into a number of provide zones and the water provided to every space must be monitored utilizing bulk water meters.
Throughout routine operations, these provide zones are anticipated to be remoted in order that the water will be tracked to determine losses, shortages and overconsumption. Nevertheless, in Mumbai, these provide zones will not be remoted and there are a number of cross-connections throughout provide zones.
As well as, the community just isn’t fitted with bulk water meters. Nor are all client connections metered. Consequently, measuring water flows inside the metropolis and quantifying water losses just isn’t possible.
For municipal engineers, it isn’t simple to hint how a lot water is flowing to which components of town. The estimated (or guesstimated) water losses inside the distribution community are round 40%. In such a state of affairs, merely constructing extra dams and shedding round 40% of saved water within the metropolis’s distribution community just isn’t a rational technological alternative.
Regardless of water being out there in dams, a substantial inhabitants inside Mumbai depends on groundwater provided by way of non-public tankers as a consequence of a poor distribution community. This vulnerability of residents was revealed in February 2023 when the Mumbai Water Tanker Affiliation known as for a strike. Many business institutions, establishments, and residents, together with these residing in deliberate buildings, suffered.
The precedence must be for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Company to evaluate the water provide challenges utilizing extra lifelike numbers to quantify the necessities of residents of assorted socio-economic statuses by conducting in depth client surveys.
It has by no means executed this.
Earlier than pushing capital-intensive tasks to reinforce provide, the municipality ought to inform residents in regards to the standing of the water distribution community: the share of households linked to piped water provide in several components of town, the water strain, per capita supply of water in several zones, timings and the reliability of provide.
By decreasing water losses, Mumbai can save water and probably keep away from (or postpone) setting up costly dams and desalination crops.
It should pay larger consideration to enhancing the distribution community. The poorly managed distribution community is the explanation residents endure. Multi-crore tasks that can harm the setting and Adivasis within the hinterland should be thought of after a extra lifelike evaluation of the issue.
Sachin Tiwale is Fellow, Water and Society Programme, Centre for Setting and Improvement, Ashoka Belief for Analysis in Ecology and the Setting, Bangalore. His e-mail ID is sachin.tiwale@gmail.com.