Private companies will soon play a direct role in the city’s water supply. They will generate water from sewage, which will be supplied to private companies.
Private companies will soon play a direct role in the city’s water supply. They will generate water from sewage, which will be supplied to private companies.
The ongoing water crisis has opened up the gates for private firms. The BMC, which until now had resisted the temptation of seeking private help in water production, recently invited applications (expression of interest) from private firms to treat sewage water, and make it available for non-potable purposes of commercial use.
The applications were invited for setting up a recycling plant of 150 million-litre capacity for the waste water to be tapped from the civic body’s Ghatkopar sewage treatment plant.
Civic officials said that the response to the applications has been
encouraging. Top global and national corporate giants, including Gammon Infrastructure, Larsen and Toubro, Veolia Water, Hindustan Door-Oliver, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS), Jindal Water Infrastructure Limited and Triveni Engineering, among others, have shown interest.
A senior official revealed that 22 corporates will be competing for the contract to set up the recycling plant on design-built-operate and transfer basis.
The waste water will be treated at the recycling plant set up by the
selected firm. It will then be supplied to commercial companies at rates higher than the ones charged for supply of drinking water to residential consumers. Officials said that the rates will however be below those currently charged by the BMC to commercial users (Rs18 - Rs25).
Even as the private firms will be generating water, the BMC is yet to decide on whether to award them the rights to supply as well. Senior officials were against the idea of awarding the supplying rights, claiming that a control of the conveyance of water must remain with the civic body for control over the quality and the charges for the supply.
The selected firm, which will be given the rights to run the plant for a minimum of 30 years, will however be asked to identify consumers who will avail supply of the treated water. They will also have to bear the cost of conveying the water to these customers.
The BMC claims that one-third of the treated water from Ghatkopar could be conveyed to the Deonar dumping ground, while the remaining could be routed to refineries like Hindustan and Bharat Petroleum. Once such a supply is made available, the BMC plans to decrease fresh water supplies to these units proportionately.
Plans were on to construct similar plants for other sewerage treatment plants. These are located at Colaba, Versova, Bandra, Bhadnup and Love Grove at Worli. Nearly 250 mld of waste water could be treated.
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