Leaks in supply pipelines worsen city’s water crisis

The poor monsoon has left the stock of water in the lakes that feed our city at a six-year low, but the civic body has still not plugged the leaks in the pipelines even as it talks of cutting supply even more and of spending crores of rupees on cloud-seeding to make it rain.

The poor monsoon has left the stock of water in the lakes that feed our city at a six-year low, but the civic body has still not plugged the leaks in the pipelines even as it talks of cutting supply even more and of spending crores of rupees on cloud-seeding to make it rain.

HT Image

Data obtained from the Brih-anmumbai Municipal Corpora-tion’s (BMC) own department of hydraulic engineering shows that 99 leaks in the pipelines are still to be fixed. Worse, 62 of them have not been attended to since last year, even though the BMC claims to fix leaks within 24 hours.

According to the data, there were an alarming 14,675 leaks in the city’s water supply network till June. Not surprising then that 25% of the water supplied to the city is lost to leaks, pilferage and illegal water connections. This means that 800 million litres of the 3,430 million litres of water pumped to Mumbai every day does not reach those it is intended for.

If it could curb this waste, the BMC would not need to impose the 10% water cut that has been in force since July 1.

Civic officials blame the slow pace of repair work on a staff crunch at the ward level.

“Citizens need to be vigilant and report leaks to the control room. The nature of the leak plays a major role in determining the time it takes for repair work. Major damages to pipeline are bound to take more time," said Anil Tawadia, deputy hydraulic engineer.

Civic activists, however, feel the problem is deep-rooted and a quick-fix approach can't be adopted.

“There is an urgent need to speed up work on the replacement of water mains that are old, dilapidated and thereby prone to leakages. There is also no mechanism to curb the practice of water theft through illegal water connections. Illegal connections subdue the pressure of supply that reaches the city's households,” said Rajkumar Sharma, coordinator, Action for Good Governance and Networking in India.