Water crisis looms in city as tankers set to suspend services

The move came after the BMC issued various notices over the last few weeks to ring well and borewell owners, stating that the wells were a breeding ground for mosquitoes or that they did not have authorisation to use them for commercial purposes

MUMBAI: Infrastructure projects, societies and slum clusters are in for a struggle to get their water demands met, as the Mumbai Water Tankers Association (MWTA), which represents about 2,000 tankers, is all set to suspend services from April 10.

Navi Mumbai, India - July 4, 2018:( file photo ) Acure water shortage - Kharghar & Taloja in Navi Mumbai, India, on Wednesday, July 4, 2018. (Photo by Bachchan Kumar/ HT PHOTO) (HT PHOTO)

The move came after the BMC issued various notices over the last few weeks to ring well and borewell owners, stating that the wells were a breeding ground for mosquitoes or that they did not have authorisation to use them for commercial purposes. The well owners will be required to obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) and a license from the Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) in seven days or shut the wells.

The notices were sent to implement CGWA’s 2020 guidelines, which require borewell and ring well owners to have an area of 200 sq m or more around them, set up digital water flow meters, and submit groundwater reports to the CGWA. Furthermore, the tankers can be filled only within the premises.

The MWTA has stated that the guidelines are not feasible for them. “There is not enough space in the city to have an area of 200 sq m around the wells. We are ready to apply for an NOC and the license but the guidelines cannot be adhered to,” said MWTA spokesperson Ankur Sharma. “They were not created taking into account the urban landscape. They can only be implemented in rural areas.”

The tanker and borewell owners also face a communication gap as the CGWA has offices only in Nagpur and Pune. “We are not able to communicate our problems to them; there is no official contact person,” said Sharma.

A BMC official said that since 2021, the civic body had time and again asked the well owners to implement the guidelines. “We had several meetings with them and time was allotted to resolve the problems but no one worked on it,” he said.

Currently the water tanker lobby has no self-imposed limit on how much water can be drawn. “We draw as much as is required depending on the ground water availability,” said Sharma. However, the CGWA guideline cap is five to 15 tankers per day, with each tanker having a capacity of about 10,000 litres.

The BMC official said that the cap on tankers was to prevent the ingress of saline water into the ground water due to excessive extraction. “Digital meters need to be put in place so that the government can keep a track of water being drawn,” he said, adding that the government wanted to regulate the unregulated water sector and also generate revenue from groundwater extraction charges. Interestingly, the BMC’s permission to borewell owners has always had a clause that the wells cannot be used for commercial purposes, but this has never been implemented.

However, the city has a water requirement of 4,200 million litres per day (MLD) of potable water, of which the BMC supplies 3,850 MLD, while the rest is supplied by tankers from the 385 borewells and ring wells in the city. Tanker water is also the only usable water for infrastructure projects like road concretisation, metro projects, cleaning of train coaches, maintenance of public spaces like lawns and gardens.

“The CGWA guidelines are only applicable for potable water, and we supply non-potable water,” concluded Sharma. “Why then do we need a license or NOC?”