25,000 leakages in 12 months cost Mumbai 22% of its supply daily.
Here is proof that the insufficient rains last monsoon is not solely to be blamed for the prevailing water crisis in the city. The callousness and mismanagement of the civic authorities, too, must take the flak for it.
The lakes supplying water to the city did not get enough of rain water, and the scorching heat of April is sucking up
the precious little left in them. The rains are still far away,
and yet the BMC has let hundreds of millions of litres of water
go waste through the rusty, leaking pipelines.
Between April 2009 and March 2010, 69 water leakages were reported daily on an average, a report compiled by the hydraulic department of the BMC has revealed. A whopping 25,013 leakages have been reported in the 12-month period.
The department has claimed that it had plugged almost 99% of these leaking joints, but its officials have admitted too much precious water has already been lost. And the pipelines are still leaking.
The leakage menace has hit the western suburbs the hardest. This most densely populated part of Mumbai — home to 54% of the city’s inhabitants — saw over 48% of the total leakages. The Jogeshwari to Andheri belt on the eastern side of the railway lines, which comes under the K-East municipal ward, alone reported 2,432 leakages during the year. Malad came second with 2,729.
The island city reported 31% of the leakages. Areas in Dongri and Kalbadevi (B ward), among the oldest parts of the city, had 1,583 leakages.
The remaining 21% of leakages happened in the eastern suburbs. The worst-hit areas were Kurla, Bhandup, Vikhroli and Powai.
The BMC doesn’t even know for sure how much water was lost due to these leakages. Some officials said off the record that the daily loss was estimated at 22% of the supply the city got.
To control leaks in future, the BMC plans to outsource their detection. It will also revive its leakage-detection squad. “Only time can tell whether these moves will deliver,” an engineer said.
For now, the city will have to live with the leakages — 424 were detected in the first week of April.
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