Here’s what you pay for your drinking water

Rs 3.5 for a thousand litres. This is what you pay for drinking water that is now becoming dearer in Mumbai. If you were to buy a bottle of mineral water, you would end up paying nearly four times that for one litre.

Rs 3.5 for a thousand litres.

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This is what you pay for drinking water that is now becoming dearer in Mumbai. If you were to buy a bottle of mineral water, you would end up paying nearly four times that for one litre.

The municipal corporation spends Rs 7.5 on bringing this water to your tap.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) tries to balance its revenue by charging non-domestic users a higher rate so households can receive water at subsidised rates. Domestic users consume 92 per cent of the 3,450 million litres supplied to the city daily.

The remaining eight per cent is distributed to bulk users like hospitals, industries, and swank hotels at higher rates.
Hospitals pay Rs 10.5, industrial units Rs 18 and commercial users pay Rs 25 for 1,000 litres.

Five- and seven-star hotels and the Mahalaxmi racecourse pay Rs 38 for 1,000 litres. Domestic users are, thus, billed only for 1,667 MLD of water instead of 3,4,50 MLD.

“We have slabs designed in such a manner that the domestic users pay less and we recover the cost from the bulk users,” said an official from accounts department requesting anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The civic body spends a whopping Rs 912.5 crore to draw water to the city and distribute it while the revenue generated from billing for it is only Rs 800 crore. The BMC’s water department, however, earns profits from interest earned from deposits received for every new connection.

Additional Municipal Commissioner, Anil Diggikar, said that Mumbai is still better off compared to other cities when it comes to revenue from water supply.

This year, due to scanty rainfall, the civic body has imposed a 15 per cent cut in the supply to domestic users while the bulk users face a 30 per cent cut.