Even as residents of areas falling under Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC) are facing water cut for one day in a week and residents are blaming the civic authorities for not taking proper measures to see to it that sufficient water is available for the residents, the local legislator said the issue is due to improper water supply from the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP).
“The MJP supplies water to New Panvel, Kalamboli and Karanjade nodes from its Patalganga reservoir even as they come under Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC). However, the pipeline through which the water is supplied has been damaged a lot leading to water wastage. MJP releases 105 MLD of water from the reservoir, but we get just 82 MLD and the remaining 23 MLD of water is wasted and PMC receives less water,” Panvel MLA Prashant Thakur told Free Press Journal.
Pipeline likely to be repaired by September 2024: Thakur
He said that due to his constant follow up with the state government authorities, the MJP authorities have already commenced the repair works. “The pipeline is likely to be repaired by September, 2024 and till the work is completed, the MJP has no option but to continue to supply water through the old pipeline putting pressure on it. I hope that the repair works gets completed before time,” Thakur said.
He added that since PMC receives less water, the civic body is left with no option but to impose water cuts for proper utilisation of the available water, particularly during summer.
Water cut to continue till June 15, 2024
According to a release issued by the Panvel Municipal Corporation (PMC), the residents will have to face water cut to be implemented by the civic body for a day every week starting from December 8, 2023. The water cut is likely to continue till June 15, 2024. As a result, the water supply would remain suspended on any of the weekdays area wise except on Sundays. PMC says that the water cut is being implemented due to less water available in Dehrang Dam, which supplies water to the city and nearby areas.
As per the release, the PMC has decided to reduce the water intake from Dehrang dam to 10MLD (millions of litres per day). This is to keep the dam’s water stock level stable until June 15, 2024. As a result, the water supply deficit now stands between 7MLD to 8MLD and the civic body is implementing the water cut to meet this shortage.
The capacity of the Dehrang Dam is 3.5 million cubic metres. However, this is not enough to meet the water supply demand of Panvel city. According to sources, Panvel civic area is supplied 16 MLD from Dehrang Dam, 11 MLD from Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran (MJP) and 5 MLD of water from Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation’s (MIDC) Barvi dam.
