How the municipal council may be contaminating Mumbai's drinking water

The water supplied to homes in the western suburbs and certain areas of Mumbai may contain chemical residue, posing serious health risks. The source of the contamination is around 25km from the Vaitarna River in Nashik district, where daily more than six tonnes of waste from Igatpuri, a hill station around 130km northeast of Mumbai, is dumped by the town's municipal council into a stream, which locals and experts said, joins the river near the Middle Vaitarna and Upper Vaitarna dams. Around 17 lakh homes in the city get water from these dams every day. What's worse, is the water, which flows for 150km before reaching the city, is treated only once; that too at a 30-year-old treatment plant in Bhandup, which is not entirely equipped to rid the water of some of the chemicals. On a visit to the site, HT witnessed waste dumped into the stream from a four-acre illegal dump yard adjacent to it. A video captured by locals shows the municipal council emptying waste into the stream.