Water desalination plant at Manori gets coastal authority nod

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's seawater desalination plant at Manori has been approved by the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority. The plant, which will be based on technology used in Israel, is expected to help alleviate water shortages in Mumbai caused by monsoon failures and climate change. The initial capacity of the plant will be 200 million litres per day, with the potential to expand to 400 million litres per day. The project has a budget provision of INR 200 crore and is being implemented by the civic body.

Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)’s seawater desalination plant at Manori was cleared by the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) on November 2. Principal Secretary of the state environment department, Pravin Darade, confirmed the development.

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Darade is the chairperson of MCZMA, who gives crucial permission for any projects close to the coast and covered by Coastal Regulation Zone notification of the Environment Protection Act. “Mumbai currently has all surface water storage reservoirs and whenever there is a monsoon failure, the water cuts cannot be ruled out. The late onset of monsoon and early withdrawal of monsoon also results in water cuts, inconveniencing citizens, P Velarasu, BMC’s additional commissioner (projects), said. “Climate change is another major concern, and it is very important that Mumbai has diverse water source portfolios. In this regard, the Desalination plant is a blessing for Mumbai. BMC will meet total energy requirements from green energy or will produce equivalent green energy for this project. If we consider the life cycle cost analysis, the cost of production of water is only marginally higher than conventional methods. This project will make water cuts in Mumbai a history.’’

The project will come up on land which was leased to Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation and Velarasu said that they had written to the collector of Mumbai Suburbs to hand over the land to BMC. Sources in the state government say that many had eyed this land for years. The BMC has already made a budget provision of ₹200 crore in the budget this year and it will be spread over 12 hectares.

The desalination plant was one of the pet projects of Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray.

So far, the alliance government led by chief minister Eknath Shinde has scrapped many of Aaditya Thackeray’s beautification projects – mostly in his Worli assembly constituency but this one is being implemented by the civic body.

Thackeray, who was Mumbai’s guardian minister for suburbs in MVA rule said, “The desalination plant basically would give us an ideal amount of water supply at a minimal cost. It was ₹1200 crores initially when we initiated it. I wanted to always shift Mumbai’s water supply away from complete monsoon dependency, and this was a step in that direction. Thankfully, CM Uddhav Thackeray ji fully backed the idea, and this could have been scaled up for most of Maharashtra. It’s crucial that we think beyond the monsoons for our water supply. Monsoons will now be erratic.’’ He added that permissions have come quite late, they should have come last year.

Last year, the civic body appointed a consultant to conduct a feasibility study, and a detailed project report was done in November 2022. BMC officers said that the plant is being set up instead of the Gargai dam project, which was proposed to increase the water supply to the metropolis by 440 million litres per day (MLD). The Manori plant’s initial capacity will be 200 MLD and can be expanded to 400 MLD. The BMC and state had canceled the Gargai dam project, which would have meant cutting five lakh trees and instead drawing the same quantity of water from the desalination plant.

The BMC had studied spots like Madh, Sewri Manori, and Marve, of which Manori was found to be ideal. The technology used in the plant is based on desalination plants in Israel, which have over two decades of experience in taking water from the Mediterranean Sea and treating it through a process called reverse osmosis. Five desalination plants along Israel’s coast provide nearly all the tap water for the country. Dubai, too has a desalination plant at Jebel Ali, which is powered by gas.