Mira Bhayandar water crisis deepens as MIDC cuts over 15% against the 10% ordered

Residents of Mira Bhayandar are facing a severe shortage because of water cuts, and the issue is heating up. The cut has been fixed by the government at 10 per cent, but the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) is in effect cutting more than 15 per cent. Residents of the city are bearing the brunt needlessly.

The city is sanctioned 86 million litres a day from the STEM authority and 125 million litres a day from MIDC. MIDC is to supply the 125 million litres until 2031. The municipal corporation claims that about 118 million litres a day currently comes from MIDC and 83 to 84 million litres from STEM. That means the corporation receives an average of 202 million litres a day. Leakage and processing losses are cited as the reasons for the supply falling short of the sanctioned quota.

The city's population is growing, and both authorised and unauthorised construction is going on at a large scale, so demand for water is higher than before. No new water has been added over the years. Politicians and the municipal corporation have been giving people assurances on the strength of the Surya water scheme. Besides, Mira Bhayandar lies at the tail end of the dams that supply it, so water arrives in smaller quantities and at low pressure. Even a one-day shutdown takes three to four days for supply to return to normal.

Rainfall after the monsoon has been poor this year, the effect of El Nino, and rain has been absent since October. The returning monsoon rain was also scant. At the government level, a shortfall of rain is feared next year too. To ensure the water available in the Barvi dam is properly managed until August 31, 2027, and that a shortage does not arise later, the state government has imposed a 10 per cent water cut.

Under this, supply from STEM is shut every Wednesday from 9 am to 3 am on Thursday, a period of 18 hours. MIDC shuts the city's supply every Thursday from midnight to 12 noon on Saturday, a total of 36 hours.

As a result, against the roughly 118 million litres a day normally received from MIDC, only 12 million litres arrived last Friday and only 27 million litres on Saturday. From STEM too, only 35 million litres came on Wednesday, against 83 to 84 million litres.

For the week of October 19 to 25, MIDC supplied a total of 631 million litres. At 118 million litres a day, the weekly quantity works out to 826 million litres. Deducting 10 per cent of that, or 83 million litres, the city should have received 743 million litres. But MIDC gave 112 million litres less, so only 631 million litres was received. In effect, the cut is more than 15 per cent, not 10.

The same is true of time. Going by the hours in a week, a 10 per cent cut should mean about 18 hours of shutdown, but MIDC is keeping the water off for 36 hours at a stretch. With cuts of more than 10 per cent in both quantity and time, the shortage is weighing needlessly heavily on the people of Mira Bhayandar. In many parts of the city, the gap between supplies has stretched to 70 to 75 hours, leaving residents distressed in many places. Meanwhile, the private tanker lobby has raised water rates by Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000.