Summer to make pipelines vulnerable even as BMC saves city from crisis this time around.
Were you surprised at receiving adequate water at home despite the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) imposing a steep water cut last week? The reason that happened was because the water cut was not steep at all.
The civic body had doubled the water cut from 15% to 30% on
March 24 to save Mumbaikars from a water crisis, following a series of pipeline bursts in the city. However, the cut never really turned out to be 30%.
Despite having lost several million litres of water to the pipeline bursts, the BMC hydraulic department managed to supply almost the same amount of water — 2,900 million litres daily (mld) — as it had been doing since last monsoon. “The city was only subjected to a 2% hike in water cut,” a senior hydraulic department official said.
To compensate for the reduction in supply from the Tansa pipelines, which burst five times in three days last week, the BMC lifted more water from the Modak Sagar-Upper Vaitarna reservoirs, hydraulic chief Vinay Deshpande said.
Similarly, on Saturday, after the Tansa main burst at Valpada near Bhiwandi for the second time in the month, BMC engineers quickly commissioned a new 3-km water pipeline,
“The replacement curbed water wastage on account of the burst. It also meant that supply did not need to be discontinued despite repairs to the isolated portion,” Deshpande said.
Also, to arrest bursts from taking place on the water pipelines, the BMC has decided to increase vigilance at spots that have been identified as vulnerable. “The move will ensure that leakages in the pipeline network will be reported more efficiently and water loss could be reduced,” a senior hydraulic department official said. The official, however, added that the city should be prepared to face a few more bursts in the months to come.
“The two water mains that bring water from Tansa are over 80 years old. They have corroded at many points. As the temperature in the city mounts, their vulnerability index tends to increase,” the official said.
Even Deshpande admitted to the move of increasing vigilance at vulnerable points along the pipelines. “We have asked officials to identify vulnerable portions of the pipeline,” he said, adding that the problem could be fully overcome after the Tansa replacement work was completed in 2013.
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