Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the project had been dropped due to concerns over costs and logistics.
The BMC's ambitious plans for a Rs 1,000 crore desalination plant to quench Mumbai's increasing thirst for water seem to have formally come a cropper.
In a written reply to an unstarred question by Apurva Hiray, in the state legislative council, in the ongoing budget session, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said the project had been dropped due to concerns over costs and logistics.
"After examining all issues related to a project for desalination of seawater, it came to light that the process is very costly and electricity-intensive, and depends on all-round supply of power," noted Fadnavis.
Such desalination projects are operational in cities like Dubai and Chennai.
Earlier, the BMC's plans to set up a plant to desalinate water from the Arabian Sea for potable use had faced a hitch as investors were not willing to pump in money for the Rs 1,000 crore project with a 100 million litres a day (MLD) capacity.
The project required at least 25 hectares of land and while the BMC did not have space of its own for it, the Mumbai Port Trust, which has a huge land bank on the eastern sea front, had declined to part with the land.
In 2016, the civic administration had submitted a report to the standing committee admitting that the project, which was to be undertaken on a PPP mode, was not financially sustainable considering the investments required.
While desalinated water would cost citizens Rs 70 per 1,000 litres, the BMC supplies 1,000 litres of water to end-users for just Rs 4.50. The report pointed out that rather than investing in such projects, which would yield less quantity of water, it would make more sense to invest in projects to bring water from dams located around 100-150 km away.
The desalination proposal was meant to tide over poor rains in the catchment of the dams which supply water to Mumbai. A committee, under then Chief Secretary Johny Joseph, had suggested that the BMC start two desalination plants – one in South Mumbai and other either in the suburbs or anywhere in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region with the capacity of processing 100 MLD sea water into potable drinking water.
While the demand for water in Mumbai is 4,250 MLD, the supply from six water sources hovers at a much lower quantity of 3,400 MLD.
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