City’s water woes to be dammed

MUMBAI: Touted as the solution to Mumbai’s water woes— and damned by environmentalists as a potential disaster—the Middle Vaitarna dam is closer to becoming a reality.
The Union environment ministry, which rejected the Rs 1,200-crore project last year, because it would destroy too many trees, has now reconsidered its decision after a tree re-count was done by IIT, Mumbai.
Ministry and BMC officials told TNN that the dam had been approved by the clearance committee and now awaits the minister’s formal consent. The BMC is relying on the dam— to be built across the Vaitarna River, 122 kilometres away in the Sahyadris—to help solve the city’s water shortage.
Mumbai’s water supply falls short by about 1,000 million litres per day (mld). The dam is expected to reduce this gap by almost half by supplying 445 mld. The ministry’s reported about-turn on the issue is largely due to a re-assessment of the environmental damage, say officials.
While it was originally estimated that the dam would destroy 2.5 lakh trees over 600 hectares (a little less than the size of Sahar international airport), a new survey carried out by IIT scientists brought that number down by half.
The ‘tree re-count’ showed that only 1.27 lakh trees would be affected over 282 hectares of forested land. The BMC has promised compensatory afforestation of over 600 acres in nearby Beed district instead.
The dramatic reduction in the number of trees to be affected was largely due to importance given to trees that are over 30 centimetres in girth. “Most trees below that size don’t survive anyway,’’ said an official.
The re-count also deducted rocky areas, grasslands, open and cultivated lands, roads and bridges, which account for half the land that would be submerged, from its final results.