The state has sought help from the Centre to set up desalination plants to ease the city’s water woes.
Chief minister Ashok Chavan, who met the prime minister on Monday, is believed to have forwarded a request to the prime minister’s office (PMO) for a special grant for the project.
The PMO had earlier approved a special grant for construction of a desalination plant with a capacity of 100 million litres a day at Nemmeli in Chennai. The BMC is hoping for a similar monetary grant for Mumbai.
The civic body is also toying with the idea of setting up the plant through private participation on a design-build-operate-transfer basis.
The request for funding from the Centre comes after a two-day visit by municipal commissioner Swadhin Kshatriya and civic engineers to the Chennai plant last month. Chennai has started work to set up two desalination plants — one near Minjur and the other at Nemmeli.
Following the visit, BMC officials are exploring the possibility of setting up one 100 MLD plant in the city instead of several smaller ones as proposed earlier. But land constraints and excessive sea pollution could be impediments to this plan. The other big obstacle is that a 60-acre plot by the sea will be needed for a 100 MLD plant.
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