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CM steps in to solve city’s water woes………Ketaki Ghoge
In a bid to tide over the city’s water crisis, Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Wednesday asked the municipal corporation to set up a desalination plant with a capacity of 100 million litres a day (MLD).
Chavan, at the monthly meeting of the war room on infrastructure, asked Municipal Commissioner Swadheen Kshatriya to engage consultants to prepare a feasibility report on it — the first step for any project.
The project will cost around Rs 1,000 crore. The city is facing a water crunch of around 800 MLD. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has imposed a 15 per cent water cut on residential users.
Chavan also asked the BMC and the Urban Development department to speed up the setting up of recycling plants to treat sewage water for non-potable uses. The corporation had planned to set up a desalination plant of 10 MLD but Chavan wanted to ramp up its potential.
Chavan and senior bureaucrats recently toured Singapore to study desalination and water recycling units there and want these replicated in Mumbai.
The BMC is soon going to make the recycling of water mandatory in housing societies so that grey water is reused for gardening or in toilets.
“The chief minister was keen on the setting up of the desalination plant and recycling of water units in all major cities. But it will be implemented in Mumbai first,” said U.P.S. Madan, project director of Mumbai Transformation Support Unit. Madan, who was at the war room meeting, said Chavan also took up the issue of solid waste management and cleanliness.
War rooms on infrastructure will be replicated in districts across the state starting with Chavan’s hometown, Nanded.
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