The BMC has failed to desilt all the city nullahs in time for the monsoon; mounds of silt left by the nullahs went slithering back with the rainwater on Thursday
The BMC has failed to desilt all the city nullahs in time for the monsoon; mounds of silt left by the nullahs went slithering back with the rainwater on Thursday
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A large part of the whopping Rs 131 crore spent by the civic body to dredge up silt from the city's nullahs has, quite literally, gone down the drains.
The pre-monsoon showers, which drenched the city on Thursday, took the silt, which had been raked out of the nullahs but left on the side of the streets, right back to where it had come from.
BMC officials sounded undecided about the status of their project. An official from the BMC said, "Silt from the minor nullahs was left along the street. Owing to the untimely rains, they flowed back into the drains."
Additional Municipal Commissioner Aseem Gupta, however, was reluctant to admit to failure, saying, "There isn't much silt left outside the drains.
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Moreover, the desilting work is going on and will be completed by tomorrow."
Although BMC has failed to stick to its slated May 31 deadline for completing all the pre monsoon work, it has managed to remove 4 lakh cubic metres of silt from the major nullahs, against the target of 4.45 lakh cubic metres.
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However, only 3.5 lakh cubic metres of this dredged up silt was transported to the dumping ground, while the rest was left behind on the roads, and went slithering back to nullas with the rainwater on Thursday.
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Needless to say, this is means that the money spent in raking up .5 lakh cubic metres of silt has been wasted.
Desilting work on the minor nullahs is on the verge of completion in some parts of the city.
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The BMC's Chief Engineer of Storm Water Drains, L Vhatkar said, "The unexpected rain has not affected the desilting work at all. The silt is being transported to the dumping grounds."
He added that 98 per cent of the desilting work had been completed in the western suburbs, 90 per cent in the eastern suburbs, and 88 per cent in the city, promising that the work would be completed by Saturday.
One of the reasons for the BMC's inability to dispose of all the dredged up silt could be the lack of space, required for offloading.
Gupta said, "The dumping limit of the Deonar ground has been exceeded. If the dumping ground rises beyond a certain height, it can create problems for the Airport Authority of India.
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The dumping ground at Kanjurmarg is not ready and we cannot offload silt there. So we are searching for locations inside the city where we can transport the silt.
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Even if we manage this year, it appears that this space crunch will create problems during desilting next year. The new dumping sites have not yet been finalised. This will be done in a few days."
The Deonar dumping ground receives about 5,500 metric tonnes of waste and 600 metric tonnes of silt every day.
It has been stomaching an additional 9,000 metric tonnes of silt daily since May, during BMC's desilting project. Around 1,200 trucks from across the city empty garbage there daily.
The number increased to 3,500 trucks per day during BMC's desilting drive. The BMC is not allowed to dump waste beyond a height of 40 metres at the 84-year-old dumping ground.
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