Water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink

The monsoon is finally upon us So much so that the city is drowning in rainwaterIn the streets of Bhagat Singh Nagar1 Goregaon West water reaches the knees as this writer goes to meet slumdwellers who have been facing the brunt of the cityrsquos water scarcity In a corner sits Lakshmi selling corn on the cob The corn sits on a makeshift table and the water on the streets is just shy of touching it ldquoFlooding is a big problem A lot of water goes inside my homerdquo she says pointing to the bluewalled dwelling on whose doorstep she sits ldquoIt isnrsquot so bad right nowrdquo she says even as wersquore kneedeep in water ldquoThe monsoon has only just begunrdquoIn these streets water is all around mdash except for the tap Even after raining for two weeks lake levels mdash the main suppliers of the cityrsquos water mdash had only gone up slightly as of ThursdayResidents wait up to 5 days to get water in Bhagat Singh Nagar1 Goregaon West in the middle of monsooninduced flooding PicSatej ShindeIn Mumbai floodwater could invade your house but you might still have to struggle to get water for drinking and cooking ldquoBefore we would get water from 6 am and by 8ndash830 am everyone would have filled the needed amount of water Now one member has to wait five days to get a chance to fill waterrdquo says Rohan Garg name changed who has been a resident here for 25 yearsAlthough this yearrsquos water crisis is being called an exception and the hope is that the rains will fix this problem green warriors and experts told us that the rain is no longer recharging the cityrsquos groundwater the way it used to because of how concretised Mumbai is Over 50 per cent of the city is built up according to a Centre for Science and Environment study leaving little open ground for the rainwater to seep into the ground Instead most rainwater ends up in drains and falls into the seaSince water doesnrsquot go into the ground more and more of it is going to flood our city and less and less will be available for drinkingAnkur SharmaAround 20 years back all 35 homes in Gargrsquos chawl had a private tap Now there are three taps that the entire chawl shares Gargrsquos mother wakes up at 6 am to collect water from one of these taps which 13 other families share with themldquoRight now we try to minimise our water usage as much as possible We keep buckets of water stored in our home Thankfully we have storage space Most other residents donrsquotrdquo he says ldquoBut there is camaraderie among residents If we run out of water we ask neighbours Especially if itrsquos drinking water everyone sharesrdquoldquoEven till six months ago we had a daily supply of water But now it has become a huge issue Never have we ever experienced such killat scarcity that we have to run out with bucketsrdquo he saysThirtyfive residents share only three taps in Rohan Gargrsquos name changed chawl in Bhagat Singh Nagar1 Goregaon West Representational file picFlood water is still always around ldquoWater gets filled up till the knee When we were younger our home was on the street and water would rush in every monsoonrdquo he says ldquoWe have now made our home in such a way that it is one foot above the ground But those who donrsquot have this still sufferrdquoHas the rain helped with better supply we ask him ldquoNo We still have to wait a lot Sometimes people start fighting at the tap because they are irritated They ask lsquoHow much water will you hoardrsquordquoEvery day the 32yearold gets ready to head to his corporate job in Cotton Green But before he even reaches Goregaon station to catch his train he finds himself drenched ldquoI canrsquot wear shoes or socks ever Most times water from gutters makes its way onto the streetsrdquo he says The cityrsquos unfulfilled water demands are now being met by water tanker supply Ankur Sharma spokesperson for the Mumbai Water Tanker Association says that rapid development means that they might not be able to fulfill that demand soon ldquoWe appreciate that Mumbai is developing But the question is Are we capable of storing enough water We are building dams but do we have enough ground and drinking water Is the government planning accordinglyrdquoSharma paints a sharp contrast between the streets of Bhagat Singh Nagar and the highrises of the city ldquoIn Worli people are buying flats worth hundreds of crores but there is still no water Societies are installing booster pumps and motors to suck out more water from MCGM lines to satisfy their daily needs But they wonrsquot install a rainwater harvesting plant even though the BMC requires rainwater harvesting for all new building projects redevelopments and properties with a builtup area of 500 square metres or moreldquoPeople are asking for swimming pools and jacuzzis Water that could serve 1500 households gets consumed for one swimming poolrdquo Sharma says ldquoSome people are getting abundant water while others are not getting anyrdquolsquoAll drains are designed to throw water into the searsquoEnvironmentalists and scientists explain why rainwater doesnrsquot always convert to groundwaterRakesh Kumar and Zoru BhathenaThe delay in the arrival of the monsoon has largely been attributed as the reason behind a water crisis this year Well itrsquos been an entire two weeks now since it first rained The city is flooded and yet the water crisis is still upon usRakesh Kumar who is a scientist at the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute tells us that Mumbai has become too concretised A report from the Centre for Science and Environment finds that Mumbairsquos builtup area has increased from 384 per cent in 2003 to 521 per cent in 2023 Green cover has decreased from 358 per cent in 2003 to 302 per cent in 2023 ldquoSo yes from one angle it looks fine because wersquore doing a good job in terms of infrastructurerdquo Kumar says ldquoThe flip side is that water movement and its soaking into the ground has been reducingrdquoAs we concretise the city not only do we stop groundwater recharging but ldquothe speed at which water flows through the city increases The roads drains everything is concretised which means they are really smooth Urban flooding goes up really high thenrdquoEnvironmentalist Zoru Bhathena explains why Mumbairsquos water management systems are failing ldquoThe entire drainage system is designed to take every single drop of rainwater that falls in the city put it into a drain and send it into the seardquo he saysldquoTo reduce flooding in Mumbai the BMC installs pumping stations A few years ago the BMC proudly proclaimed that on a single day of heavy rain they pumped out more than the capacity of two lakes that supply water to the city in a single day and threw it into the sea Good rain water the capacity of two entire lakes fully lost to the seardquo Bhathena says ldquoThat is the magnitude of the catastrophe we are facingrdquoMumbai is seeing an unprecedented number of construction sites ldquonearly 10000 of them simultaneouslyrdquo Bhathena says ldquoEvery single one of them is building basements When they dig they hit groundwater which they throw into drains which eventually send sit into the seardquoldquoAnd this wastage doesnrsquot just affect a small pocket of groundwater under that plot When they suck out the water the surrounding groundwater flows back in So they keep sucking until they dry out the groundwater in the entire vicinityrdquo Bhathena saysldquoThere was an instance in the Juhu area a few years ago There were mangroves on one side and a natural drain on the other flowing into the mangroves and then into the seardquo Kumar says ldquoThe authorities concretised that drain thinking it was a good thing to do But then some areas that never used to get flooded started floodingrdquoldquoIf you see earlier Mumbai had so many mills Most of the buildings that have come up in the last 10 to 15 years are on mill land The whole idea in the beginning was that you would make highrises and create more space on the ground But what has happened is that because of highdensity development we are concretising each and every inch of these mill lands which were huge areas where water used to soak into the groundrdquo Kumar says ldquoIrsquom not saying the mills werenrsquot concretised but not to the extent that you see today On average I think 30ndash40 per cent of the mill lands were actually free thenrdquoVertical development is an idea largely derived from places like New York City and Singapore ldquoBut in Singapore they have frozen areas meant for development and green areas meaning they do not interfere with themrdquo Kumar says ldquoThe whole idea of cluster development is fine It may be the need of the city But on the ground keep your spaces free You cannot do both You cannot cover the ground and also build upwards endlessly Wherever they have done vertical development mdash New York or Singapore mdash they have also created a lot of free natural surfaces on the groundrdquoBhathena too points to Chennai also a coastal city as a warning sign ldquoChennai had very poor municipal water supply The entire city extracted water from the groundrdquo Bathena says ldquoBecause they overextracted it they ruined the cityrsquos groundwater reserves The same thing may happen in Mumbai one day When it will happen God knows But when it happens it cannot be reversedrdquoldquoI remind you that in a single day Mumbai gets and drains more water than the capacity of two lakes This is a unique advantage no other city has To have a water crisis in this city is unthinkablerdquo Bhathena says ldquoAnd yet here we are Because poor governance has led us to drain all our readily available rainwater into the seardquo521Proportion of the city that has been concretisedHow design can helpPranav Naik urban designer and founder of Studio Pomegranate sheds light on design interventions that can help with groundwater percolationPranav Naik built groundwater percolation systems in and around Senapati Bapat Marg in Lower Parel Water flows from the bridge above and surrounding areas underneath the benches from where it percolates into the ground PicBy Special ArrangementThough the BMC relies on the cityrsquos seven catchment lakes for water supply ldquoseveral places have historically relied on wellsrdquo says urban planner Pranav NaikThe water cuts by BMC this year have made these wells all the more important Moreover water tanker supply which is about 550 million MLD comes from groundwater extractionIn 2011ndash12 Naik built a rainwater harvesting system for his offices in Lower Parel ldquoThere were downtake pipes from the terrace so millions of litres of water came down every monsoon You cannot possibly store that much water in tanksrdquo Naik says ldquoSo I diverted it to two places as groundwater recharge systems The water simply goes into the ground and then is extracted from the four wells around Even though wersquove moved offices now from May 2013 onwards that building has never needed a water tanker something they used to require every year beforerdquoThe BMC identifies 496 flooding spots in Mumbai ldquowhich have gone up from some 20 spots in the 1970srdquo Naik says Open grounds are then absorption sponges ldquoThink of it like a perforated vesselrdquo he says ldquoTo demonstrate this to the BMC in 2017 we took up the Mumbai Mile Projectrdquo It is an initiative to redesign a 19 km stretch of Senapati Bapat Marg in Lower ParelPranav NaikldquoWithin it we built groundwater percolation systems about 250 metres long each on both sides of the flyover between Dadar and Lower Parel and from Lower Parel towards Kamala Millsrdquo Naik explains ldquoAll the stormwater goes into these percolation pits and gets absorbed into the ground We deliberately decided not to use the BMCrsquos stormwater drains because we didnrsquot want to burden the system with more waterrdquoThe system is a proof of concept and is 100 per cent maintenancefree Naik hopes that the BMC implements in throughout the city Therersquos not much to be done to substantially reduce the use of concrete Naik says ldquoBut we can do it mindfully There are paver blocks that let water pass through them which cost as much as any other paver blockrdquoldquoThe most worrying part is that even if only 25 to 30 per cent of the city is paved over look at how much flooding is happening because of it Are we moving forwards or backwards We have to do something drastic and very soon If things continue this way wersquore all going to be underwaterrdquo Naik laments250mLength of water percolation systems built by Pranav Naik in Lower Parel