Despite adequate rainfall and overflowing dams, the twin-city continues to face an acute crisis of water for the past couple of weeks. While the shortage is being attributed to frequent shutdowns owing to technical glitches and pipeline bursts, the water supply department of the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC) is neither serious in monitoring rain-water harvesting (RWH) systems, nor is it cared to conduct the much needed water audits to plug in-transit leakages and thefts, even as the much hyped water management policy is stuck in limbo.
As against the requirement of over 225 MLD, the twin-city has an allotted supply of 211 MLD provided jointly by the MIDC (125 MLD) and Shahad Temghar- STEM (86 MLD) water supply authority. However the actual supply hovers around below 200 MLD as the civic administration still loses a huge quantity of potable water in transit on a daily basis owing to leakages, unaccounted supply and theft.
While the frequency of water supply has been limited to once in 72 to 75 hours in most of the areas, a senior MBMC officer claimed that the technical glitches had been resolved and the supply was slowly returning to normalcy. Several calls to the Executive Engineer (water supply)- Suresh Vakode went unanswered. Aimed at recharging water resources, installation of RWH systems has been since 2009.
However despite an acute scarcity of water compounded by receding groundwater table, most of the units installed to harvest rainwater are dilapidated, rusty and crying for repairs as rainwater goes down the drain every year, even as MBMC plays blind by failing to monitor the RWH mechanism. Meanwhile the BJP which single handedly rules the MBMC has decided to launch an agitation on 21, October to register their protest against the acute water crisis. As per statistics the total number of water connections in the twin-city stands at 44,714 which comprises 41,363 residential and 3,351 commercial users.
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