BMC had planned taking up the work of reconstruction of 137 years old Reservoir and proposed to construct an additional tank of 91 ML affecting 389 trees. Residents including prominent professionals objected to this proposal in view of which the BMC constituted a committee of professors from IIT Bombay, experts from local citizens and Deputy Municipal commissioner of BMC to take a conclusive decision on the reconstruction project. The committee members undertook inspection of the reservoir and had meetings in this regard. However, two opinions emerged and thus two separate reports were submitted to BMC.
The report submitted by committee members namely Dr. Vasudev Nori, Ms Alpa Sheth, Shri Rahul Kadri (All experts from local citizens) & Prof. Alok Goyal (IIT Bombay) recommended retaining the existing reservoir with repairs as they felt that the reservoir is in good condition and does not require demolition and reconstruction. The report submitted by the committee members comprising of Prof. R.S. Jangid, Prof. Jothi Prakash and Prof. Dasaka Murthy (all from IIT Bombay) & Sh. C.H. Kandalkar, DMC, BMC recommended construction of an alternate reservoir of 52.54 ML usable capacity to take care of undisturbed water supply during repair or reconstruction of the existing reservoir.
In view of the conflicting recommendations of the two reports, the BMC then approached IIT Roorkee to seek technical opinion on further course of action. Prof. Umesh Kumar Sharma, Prof. Z. Ahmad and Prof. Sanjay Chikermane, from IIT Roorkee, accepted this assignment.
The Committee after inspection of the water tanks gave their report. Few of the conclusions and recommendations the committee said the repair of the reservoir is not possible while in operation. Since tanks 1A, 1B & 1C are interconnected and similarly 2A and 2B portions are inter-linked, repair of any given tank portion is not possible in isolation. Either the tanks 1A, 1B & 1C can be repaired together or 2A & 2B can be taken up in one go. An alternate tank of 52.41 ML will be required to be constructed to enable repair of the reservoir without disrupting its water supply.
Taking objections to the IIT Roorkee report, the residents and concerned citizens’ in their letter to BMC mentioned ‘We are shocked to read the IIT-R Report of June 2024 with respect to MHR. An opinion (report) is only as good as the information shared with the expert members; and it is clearly evident that MCGM has shared erroneous information with the learned professors of IIT-R; solely with the purpose of obtaining an erroneous report’. Letter further mentions referring to the report which states that the total usable storage of MHR (Tanks 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A & 2C) is 74.52 ml, letter says this is incorrect and the actual capacity is 147.78. Concluding the objection letter it has asked the BMC not to build a new reservoir when the existing reservoir is in good condition and can easily be repaired without disrupting any water supply.
There was meeting pursuant to this complaint, one of the members posted on social media “We had a good meeting today, with Addl. MC Projects, Mr Bangar, reg HG & MHR. Mr Bangar was very receptive to our meeting. He said BMC too is interested in finding a way to repair the existing MHR without need for building an additional reservoir. He has asked us to share all the data which we feel has been suppressed from IIT-R, and he will submit this fresh data to IIT-R for review. He was also willing to hold a joint discussion between IIT-R and us to find an amicable solution. A very positive meeting.
