BMC’s clean-up plan for Mumbai’s Mithi river set to sail in June
BMC floated tenders for phase 1 of the Mithi River Water Quality Improvement Programme on Monday which will cost Rs111.42 crore.
The music video on river rejuvenation – featuring chief minister Devendra Fadnavis – that created a stir in February seems to have impacted Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) the most. The civic body has kick-started the long-pending Mithi River Water Quality Improvement Programme, and work on cleaning the river is likely to start by June.
BMC floated tenders for phase 1 of the Mithi River Water Quality Improvement Programme on Monday which will cost Rs111.42 crore.
The whole project is divided into four phases with a total cost of more than Rs539.73 crore. Tenders for all four phases will be floated one after another by October 2018, said a civic official from the Mumbai Sewage Disposal Project (MSDP) department. For phase 1 of the project, the civic body will divert the sewage generated from the slums located on the banks of Mithi river, between Vihar Lake and Powai, and take it to BMC’s sewerage treatment plant at the civic body’s water supply project (WSP) site in Powai, where it will be treated. The treated water will then be flowed back into Mithi near Vihar Lake. Presently, this sewage drains into Mithi untreated.
BG Salvi, the BMC official in-charge of this project said, “In phase 1, we plan to intercept the sewage from the nearby slums before it reaches the river. For this, we plan to build sewer lines running parallel to Mithi that will carry this sewage to the treatment plant in Powai.”
This work will be carried out on a length of 1.6km from the source of the Mithi river.
BMC appointed third party consultants to conduct a survey in April 2017 that revealed that 4 million litres/day (MLD) of sewage flows into Mithi from the settlements on the river banks in this patch of 1.6km
Salvi said, “This 4 MLD will now be taken to Powai’s WSP site. Apart from this, another 4 MLD of sewage that presently flows into Powai lake from the nearby settlements will also be taken to the WSP site. This site will treat 8 MLD of sewage and flow the water back into Mithi.
