Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has commissioned IIT-Bombay to conduct a survey on the possibilities of treating water in Mithi river and Vakola nullah. This is part of the civic body's effort to clean the river.
BMC has proposed spending Rs 80 lakh on the survey. The proposal will be placed in the next standing committee meeting for approval.
dna had reported about this initiative on October 1.
According to civic officials, IIT will submit a comprehensive report to the corporation in six to eight months after completing the survey.
"After we get the report, we will carry out a feasibility study," said an official associated with the project.
Professor DN Singh of the department of civil engineering, IIT-B, who is spearheading the survey, had told dna that the idea behind the exercise was to rejuvenate the river and free it of pollution.
"We will test the water to ascertain the level of contamination in it. We will also study the sources through which sludge and contaminated water enter it," Singh had said.
"We will also demonstrate a few state-of-the-art, in-house technologies for treatment and separation of sludge from water. The survey will begin mid-October," he had said.
The move comes after Maharashtra Pollution Control Board issued BMC a notice last December for inaction in controlling pollution in the river.
The survey will be followed by similar surveys of nullahs like Vakola nullah in the city. It will also look into the possibility of constructing sewerage treatment plants (STPs) along the river, or diverting polluted water elsewhere for treatment before discharging it back into the river.
"The possibility of putting additional sewer lines along the river will also be studied," the official said.
IIT-B, in a report prepared in 2006, had recommended setting up 37 STPs along Mithi. "The ground reality is different now. Cost-wise, it's not feasible to construct so many," the official said, adding that constructing STPs would also require acquiring land from the slums surrounding the river.
National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) had carried out an experiment in 2009 to see if the foul odour emanating from the river could be controlled and breeding of mosquitoes prevented. Independent of the BMC initiative, MMRDA had decided on a Rs6.97 crore plan in this connection.
