Water cut gone. But, what next?

The age-old adage water water everywhere, not a drop to drink may be a famous line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but it sounds very true in Mumbai’s case. The city is surrounded by sea, boasts of quite a few lakes, but citizens continue to cry for water.

For many, waking up before sunrise and storing water in overhead tanks and buckets, drums and tumblers is an everyday affair.

“I get water only for half an hour and that too at 4:30am. One can imagine how many drums I have in my house,” said Manohar Gupta, a 45-year-old shopkeeper from Chira Bazaar.

The BMC’s 15 per cent water cut diktat has put Mumbaikars in a spot. Fine, it was necessary then. The good news is that the municipal corporation is planning to roll back the cuts for a month.

“The six lakes are reaching the ‘comfortable mark’ and we decided to roll back the water cut for a month. It’s the festive season so the consumption goes higher. But, will the rollback go beyond a month? That depends on the rainfall we get in the next few weeks,” said mayor Sharaddha Jadhav.

Citizens are happy, but are also worried as to what will happen after a month. The city needs a permanent solution to the problem. There are many activists who are trying their best to make people aware about the benefits of water conservation.
“People need to start reusing the water they consume daily. This will reduce their daily requirements,” said Janak Daftary, a water activist.

He feels that recycling water is the only option. Other methods like sewage treatment plant (STP) and effluent treatment plant (ETP) used in the Ganges have failed and will not work as desired because we need organic methods.

Rainwater harvesting is another method the city can rely on to fight the water crisis. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) also plans to initiate a massive ‘green programme’ through the one-crore plantation and water harvesting plan to maintain ecological balance of the city and its metropolitan region.

But, what’s ironic is that while citizens fight among themselves — and, of course, with the authorities — for water, millions of gallons of water are wasted through pipe bursts. The authorities blame the slum dwellers for stealing water from the pipes while the tax payers’ wait eagerly for a drop of water.

We need a permanent solution, fast
I moved into a new building four years back and have been facing the water shortage problem. We get water for only an hour and a half, every morning. So, most of us have made some or the other arrangements to store water. We do get borewell water throughout the day, but one cannot depend on it as it isn’t fresh. The civic body might say that they are going to rollback water cuts but what about the people who don’t get water at all? The rains have been good this year so it was expected, but I’m sure after sometime the 10-15% water cuts will be back again. We need to solve the problem as we cannot depend on rain water alone.
Kruti Joshi, Kandivli

Situation will only become worse
Every morning at five in the morning, we have to get up to fill water through a water pump. It’s been at least six years since we got good amount of running water in our building and area. We also face the problem of load shedding so we can’t even fill water twice a day. Also, one can’t afford exuberant electricity bills. The municipal corporation only makes false promises to us about doing something about the problem but nothing is ever done. Even now, they have promising 100% water cut rollback but I don’t think it will happen in reality. The problem has to be solved soon because its only going to become worse in the coming years.
Vandana Joshi, Kalyan

Have to wake up at 5am to fill water
We have to wake up at around five in the morning to fill water. We have a separate pipeline from the rest of the colony and have installed a water pump. The whole water-shortage problem has been constant feature in our area for years now. There are many people who have been promoting water-harvesting. But old buildings like us don’t have the facilities for this and also it costs a lot so it doesn’t have many takers. However, I hope the civic body makes it mandatory for all new buildings to have some facilities to reuse water. It’s an important commodity and needs to be saved.
Nazneen A, Babulnath

Not a single drop of water for a year
For 17 years there was no problem, but since the past one year there has been no supply of fresh running water in our building and colony. We have complained to the civic body as well as others like MLAs and corporators but nothing has happened. And since the time we complained about the situation in the media, we have been harassed. For instance, now we don’t even get big water tankers but have to make do with small ones. We are taxpayers so why aren’t we provided with a basic necessity? And as for the 100% water cut rollback, I think the civic body is just fooling the people and making them happy for a month. What happens after that?
Alluddin Badgujar, Jogeshwari