BMC’s Wastewater Treatment Facility still a distant away

While two arms of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) sewerage department are doing more than the other departments of the BMC combined, its third and most ambitious arm is yet to take off.

The sewerage department, which is bifurcated in three separate arms: operation, project and disposal, has seen the least movement for its last and the most important arm.

On an average, various departments of the BMC like sewerage, road, storm water drains have spent nearly 36 per cent of the total budget, with the first two spending over 40 per cent of it.

However, there is a 14-year delay in the Wastewater Treatment Facility (WwTF) at seven centres where the second phase of the plan is to be executed. After the completion of Mumbai Sewerage Disposal Project (MSDP) phase I works, sewerage master plan II was prepared in 2002, but the actual implementation started in 2016 and is yet to gather steam. Under phase II, the BMC will upgrade the secondary and tertiary treatment plant at eight locations across the city including Dharavi.

The city gets 3,800 million litres of water a day (MLD). According to official records, 2,100 MLD water goes to the sea as sewerage water. The city’s sewerage system includes 44 satellite pumping stations and seven WwTF with preliminary treatment facility at Worli, Ghatkopar, Bhandup, Versova, Colaba, Bandra and Malad. The treated effluent is discharged into the creek.

In a bid to move forward with the plan, the BMC has appointed a Project Management Consultant for the Worli, Dharavi and Bandra plants. Ghatkopar, Bhandup, Versova plants are still in the planning stage. Meanwhile, the upgrade work of Colaba plant is underway. The Malad WwTF is waiting for environment clearance. The estimated cost of all seven centres will be around Rs 14,000 crore. The budget allocation for the same was Rs 538 crore, but only 15 per cent amount has been used for the work until now.