Inside Khar Danda’s never-ending water woes

The fishing village depends on one source for its water supply, while its population has also shot up in the last five years. Is there a solution?

Mumbai: On December 13, residents of Khar Danda had had enough. Not a drop of water had passed through their taps for five days, and anger was brewing.

Mumbai, India - Dec. 25, 2024: Congested khar Danda Koliwada facing many probles in Mumbai, India, on Wednesday, December 25, 2024. (Photo by Satish Bate/ Hindustan Times) (Hindustan Times)

The fishing village in the northwestern suburb receives water only from 6 pm to 10 pm every day. But residents’ taps had been dry even during these four hours for the past five days.

At 6 pm on December 13, the residents first waited and watched. “By 6:30 pm, when it looked like water wasn’t going to come that day too, people were furious,” said Manoj Koli, secretary of the Khar Danda Koliwada Gaonthan, a local fisher union. “Over 500 people came out of their homes and took to the street, crowding the Khar Danda junction and blocking the road.”

The police arrived within 10 minutes, but the crowd wouldn’t listen. Vehicles started piling up at the vital junction between the Khar railway station, Carter Road and Pali Hill, and chaos ensued. They had the authorities’ attention.

“BMC officials and MLA Ashish Shelar arrived, and only after many reassurances that water would be arranged by the next morning did people disperse by 9 pm,” said Koli.

“There is a massive water problem here,” said Kunda Kale, a fisherwoman and resident. “Water comes only in increments of seven to 15 minutes, the first batch having a strong dirty stench. The supply is just not enough.”

Another resident, Ratan Bhagat, said, “The only way I manage with so little is because my sons and their families do not live with me right now, but they’re going to move back soon. I don’t know how we will survive.”

Those who can afford water tankers are few and far between, only ordering them in moments of extreme desperation. During that fateful week in December, many had no choice but to resort to bottled water for immediate needs.

“The few days after the protest, water supply was better. But now it has gone back to the usual paltry and blinkered supply,” said Kale, seeing no end in sight.

Bandra’ water lines

Khar Danda’s water woes have their root in an area some 3 km away—a 568-metre stretch between Lucky Junction on SV Road and the Marks & Spencer department store on Hill Road.

The water inlet pipes in Bandra leading to a reservoir at Pali Hill were laid ahead of its commissioning in 1969, making them over 55 years old, said a senior official from the waterworks department of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC’s) H West ward. “These are massive pipes with diameters between 600mm and 750mm. All of them are old and corroded beyond repair,” added the official.

Recognising the risk, the BMC issued a ₹16-crore tender to replace the inlets in 2023. “To date, we have either replaced or are in the process of laying new lines to the reservoir,” said the official. “In September this year, we commissioned new channels along Waterfield Road from Ramdas Naik Marg to Patkar Marg.”

However, the portion between SV Road and Hill Road is an issue as the traffic police have so far refused to give permission to lay new lines along the stretch due to the construction of metro line 2B, said the official. The metro line work, which started in 2021, is still not complete. Another official from the BMC’s hydraulic department downplayed the issue, saying the work was going on phase-wise, so permissions for other portions were given first.

The waterworks official, however, said the 600mm pipe beneath the Hill Road stretch is a “ticking time bomb”, susceptible to bursts and leaks at any minute. And that’s exactly what played out in the week leading to the protest.

A week of water leaks

A major leak was first detected on December 7 in the inlet outside Tata Agiary on Hill Road. Attempts to fix the leak without ceasing the water supply failed.

On December 9, the H West ward office switched its action plan. The Pali Hill reservoir was isolated at 2 pm and repair work began, which lasted till 11 pm. As a result, water supply to Khar Danda and Dr Ambedkar Road would be delayed, the ward office announced. However, it reassured residents that it would arrange a special supply at a different timing.

Before the water-starved residents could breathe a sigh of relief, a second leak of catastrophic degrees followed at close heels. At 2 am on December 10, the water inlet outside the perennially jammed Lucky Restaurant junction burst. What followed resembled a scene from peak monsoon season in Mumbai: people and vehicles wading through water at least a foot deep.

“It was chaos,” said Furkan Shaikh, describing the scene he saw while returning home late that night. “Water was on both sides of the road. The junction is already plagued by traffic at all times, even in the dead of night, due to the metro construction, and a vehicle stopped in the midst of it all, making it worse. The water only drained out by early morning.”

The ward immediately started repair work, which affected the water supply in several parts of H West ward, including Khar Danda. The rest of the ward sufficed with water from the Veravali reservoir in Jogeshwari. A special water supply was promised for the night.

“A half-metre crack had appeared on the underside of the water inlet at the Lucky junction,” said the waterworks official. “Metal had to be welded over the patch on the pipe to repair it, which took till the next morning. It took another 24 hours for water supply in the ward to normalise.”

However, that was not the case for Khar Danda, which is the worst affected area whenever there is a disruption in the inlet pipes, said the waterworks official. “This is because it is the only zone in the ward that’s entirely dependent on the Pali Hill reservoir. Other parts of the Bandra receive water directly through water diverted from the inlets, only relying on the reservoir for a 15% boost. But for Danda to get regular supply, the reservoir has to fill up entirely, which takes three to four days.”

The official claimed that Khar Danda’s usual water timing, between 6 pm and 10 pm, had resumed on December 13, but the residents still protested “to make their point”.

Illegalities

Khar Danda’s dependence on the final frontier of water supply in Bandra is only part of the cause of its water woes. In the past two and a half years, the contours of Mumbai’s promise of employment opportunities have become visible in the koliwada (fisher colony): its migrant population has boomed.

“Khar Danda is rife with illegal buildings that keep multiplying,” said the official. People demolish their one-storey structures and build ground-plus-four/five structures with tiny rooms for homes. They’re occupied by workers who need space mainly to sleep. In the past five years, it’s likely the population has doubled. The water demand has increased, and we expect it to continue.”

Even since the ‘Water for All’ policy was enforced in May 2022, necessitating the BMC to give water connections to all residents irrespective of legal standing, requests for new water connections have poured in from Khar Danda. As many as 240 new connections have been granted, bringing the total connections in the area to 1,478.

Each of these new connections does not represent the addition of a single family, but several who live in the cramped homes—up to 15 rooms per floor, said the waterworks official.

“The buildings that come up do not have underground water tanks as buildings usually do. Instead, they place water tanks on roofs, which makes transporting water overhead directly difficult because it’s going against gravity. Hence, the residents take to fitting motors that pump water with force and push it upward, which is illegal. The motors distort water quantity readings too, making it difficult for us to charge them proportionately,” the official added.

Koli admitted this but had a justification. “This is only because Khar Danda, as a koliwada near the coast, doesn’t easily receive permission for redevelopment. The demarcation of koliwadas and gaothans (villages) by the Maharashtra government is still pending. The demarcation would lead to a separate Development Control and Promotion Regulations (DCPR) tailored for our area. Coming within Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) lines, there are also far more restrictions on development. So, residents bypass this by going the illegal route,” he said.

This is not hard to notice. Danda is dotted with buildings that look freshly distinct from the greyish stubs around, with barely a sliver of space to walk between them. Windows are tiny, looking out from one building into another: you could shake hands with the family living in the opposite building.

The economics are simple, said Koli. Families are getting bigger, rents are becoming higher, and migrants are searching for cheap accommodation. When one family sees another multiply the little land they have by going vertical, adding to their sources of income, others naturally follow. His own building was once a kholi, which his late father razed and converted into a ground-plus-four structure in the 1980s. It, too, is fitted with a water motor.

Many migrants flock to Khar Danda because the rents are cheaper, without having to venture too far into the suburbs. A small one-room-kitchen can be found from ₹10,000 a month, said Koli.

“This is where the opportunities are,” said 28-year-old Songayung Zimik, a new Khar Danda resident who arrived from Manipur this month. “A friend offered me a chance to work in a salon, and I share a small room with two others for ₹11,000. I hope to stay here for a while.”

While Koli questioned why the BMC couldn’t nip the issue in the bud and offer legal ways to rebuild, the civic waterworks official said their hands are tied. “Water is a fundamental right, and we cannot refuse to grant a condition on illegality. All we can do is inform the encroachment department that we are giving a water connection to so-and-so illegal structure, bringing it to their notice, and asking them to inform us if they take any action,” said the official.

Officials from the BMC’s encroachment department did not respond to calls for comment.

An improved future?

With the illegalities unlikely to cease anytime soon, the BMC is concentrating on meeting the area’s increased water demand.

For one, it’s hopeful the permission to fit new water inlets in the delicate stretch between SV Road and Hill Road will be granted soon. Additional municipal commissioner Abhijit Bangar has written to the joint commissioner of police (traffic), requesting permission to lay new pipelines.

“The traffic police requested us to see if the alignment of the water channels can be shifted from beneath the median to the side of the road, towards Lucky Restaurant,” said the H West ward official. “Our reasoning for designing the alignment in the centre was to avoid utilities typically laid on the sides. Once a water inlet is laid, there is little need for repeated digging. Digging of trail pits will be started shortly to check feasibility. It will be hard, but it may be possible,” added the official, who is hopeful that the new lines will be laid and commissioned before next year’s monsoon.

Joint commissioner of police (traffic) Anil Kumbhar confirmed his department is in talks with the BMC to determine how traffic on the stretch can be managed. “We haven’t yet given them permission because of the other works ongoing there, including that of the underground walkway and metro. The impact on traffic will be immense, so we’re figuring out how it can be done.”

The H West waterworks department is also devising ways to increase supply to Khar Danda. Among the plans in consideration are a new 300mm main water inlet to the area, an underground and overhead tank on a ground near the koliwada, and a gradual change of water timings to Gazdarband separate from that of Khar Danda, so that the Pali Hill reservoir is solely catering to one area in those hours. But these are still in the works and will take months to show results.

Till then, all Khar Danda can do is hope another water leak doesn’t make the hand they’ve been played worse.