One lakh million litres of water has gone waste in the city
By a rough calculation made by the Mumbai civic authorities, at least one lakh million litres of water has gone down the drain this monsoon. If the rainwater harvesting and overflow of lake water could be arrested, the city could be able to get over 1,75,000 million litres of water. Despite last year’s severe shortage, city hasn’t taken any steps to save rain water.
Last year, the monsoons failed the city, and to overcome the crisis almost everything was tried out: artificial cloud-seeding, mumbo-jumbo, digging borewells, till a 30 per cent cut (lifted last week) was imposed. But no lesson has been learnt and the record rains this year have gone to waste.
There are six lakes, most of which are outside the city limits, totally supplying 3,400 million litres of water per day to Mumbai and its suburbs.Four lakes have already overflowed, and the two major ones – Bhatsa and Modak Sagar – are almost up to the brim. The total rainfall in the city this year has been a record 3,000 mm.
“It’s very difficult to calculate that how much water goes waste in the overflow of lakes. Roughly, it would be more than 75,000 million litres. If both the rainwater harvesting and overflow of lake water could be arrested, we could be able to get over 1,75,000 million litres of water which is more than Modak Sagar’s annual stock (1,66,075 million litres),” said an official.
Suprabha Marathe, head of BMC’s rainwater harvesting department, said, “We faced severe water shortage last year. We should have learnt something from it.The groundwater level is depleting each year, because we are extracting well and tubewell water in monsoon also. That should be avoided and instead rainwater should be used for non-potable purpose. It will help to retain the stock of the reservoirs and recharge the groundwater level at the same time.”
Dinesh Gondalia, deputy municipal commissioner, said, “We are constructing middle Vaitarna IV project with the idea of arresting the overflow from upper Vaitarna. This will give an additional 455 MLD water. Even in the proposed Gargai and Pinjal dams, we will implement the connecting dam system, so that wastage is minimised.”
A senior civic official said, “Let us assume that 70 per cent of the city is built-up area and 50 per cent of these have roofed terraces. If we were able to collect around 70 per cent of water on these total roofed areas through rain harvesting methods, we could have easily collected a lakh-plus million litre of water.” He pointed out that the annual storage capacity of Tulsi and Vihar lakes is 46,720 million litres.
Source: mumbaimirror.com
BMC, Modak Sagar, Mumbai, Mumbai civic authorities, Mumbai Water, one lakh million litres of water, Rain water goes waste, Rainwater Harvesting, rainwater harvesting and overflow of lake, Residents of Mumbai, Vaitarna IV project
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