The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials recently announced that they are most likely to float tender for the ambitious desalination project at Manori by the end of October, reports stated.
This project will supply 200 million litres per day (MLD) of water after three years, if everything goes according to plan, civic officials added.
Officials clarified that since this was a first-of-its-kind project, it took a few months to study and materialise the tender documents.
It is pertinent to note that the Manori desalination project was initially favoured over the proposed Gargai dam, thereby preventing the axing of four lakh trees in the Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary.
The project was estimated to cost INR 3,500 crore in 2021, including INR 1,600 crore for setting up the facility and INR 1,900 crore for maintenance of the plant for 20 years.
It was initiated by the then Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, and it was on the fast track and the detailed proposal and evaluation were completed within one and half year. The project was put on hold after the change in government in Maharashtra.
The BMC had set aside INR 200 crore for the project in its budget for 2022-23 with the bidding supposed to be initiated by August 2022 via a global tendering system. The project, however, did not take off. In its budget for 2023-24, the BMC once again allocated INR 200 crore but did not set any deadline. The final evaluation report was officially submitted in November 2022.
The civic body is working on two projects to solve the city’s water woes, one being the desalination plant and the other the Gargai dam in Palghar. While the Gargai dam can provide 440 million litres of water a day, it also puts over four lakh trees spread over 700 hectares of Tansa Wildlife Sanctuary at risk.
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