Hindustan Times 04.12.2009

Navi Mumbai gets Best City award

Navi Mumbai, the planned city, has been chosen for the ‘Best City Award for improvement in waste water and sanitation services’ under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) for the year 2008-09. The award was presented to Navi Mumbai Mayor Anjani Bhoir and Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nahata by urban development minister Jaipal Reddy in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Thursday.

Nahata said: “We had not submitted any nomination form or applied for the award. This has come as a very pleasant surprise.

It is the ultimate recognition of our efforts to ensure Navi Mumbai gets the best infrastructure in the country.”

Standing Committee Chairman and newly-elected MLA Sandeep Naik said: “The central government has obviously taken note of the state-of-the-art infrastructure developed by us for treatment of sewage and other sanitation services including setting up more than 300 public toilets in the city.”

He added, “They have also appreciated our plans for future development of infrastructure under the JNNURM scheme that we had submitted to them. We have got approval from the urban development ministry to the tune of Rs 353 crore.”

According to Naik, “The project envisages setting up three Sewage Treatment Plants (STP) in the city apart from the three already constructed. It also proposes to have 100 per cent sewerage pipelines in the city to encompass all the areas of the nodes, villages and its surrounding areas.”

While the city already has STPs at Vashi, Nerul and Airoli, three more will come up at Koparkhairane, Belapur and Sanpada. Said Dagaonkar, “These STPs will use the latest Sequential Batch Reactor (SBR) technology.

“The purity of the water generated from the plant will also be of high quality. It can be used for industrial and gardening purposes.”