Hindustan Times 12.10.2010
Project to augment city’s water supply to begin in 2 yearsThe Central Water Commission (CWC) has cleared the Gargai project that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) plans to begin within two years. The BMC is banking on the water project to augment the city’s water supply and to also bridge the gap between the demand and supply of water in the city.
The plan is to build a dam on the river Gargai (about 120 km north of Mumbai) and the water from this river will flow into Middle Vaitarna, which can be brought to the city via the existing distribution network.
Gargai is a tributary of the Vaitarna river.
The CWC is a premier technical organisation of India in the field of water resources and is presently functioning as an attached office of the ministry of water resources in the government of India.
“Now that we have got CWC clearance, we are trying to work things out with NEERI for an environment assessment of the project,” a senior civic official said. The CWC has asked BMC to keep them in the loop while going ahead with other aspects of the project and also to submit a progress report of the project regularly.
The feasibility report by the consultants of the project states that the project would give the city an additional 440 MLD.
He also added that once the environment impact study was done, the BMC would apply for environment clearance from the Ministry of Environment and Forest department (MoEF).
Currently, the city’s demand is 4,200 million litres daily, while supply is 3,350 million litres daily.
The original target set by the Chitale Committee report for this project was 2020. “We plan to start the project by 2012 after we complete the Middle Vaitarna project. And, we want to complete the project by 2016,” said PR Ajgaonkar, chief engineer, water supply projects.
As of October 11, the city has 12.63 lakh million litres of water in all six lakes that supply water to the city.
