Suburban cities in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), with the exception of Navi Mumbai, are staring at water cuts on the lines of that imposed in Mumbai.

Navi Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nahata said, “We can sustain this season even with the present rainfall.” The satellite city gets its water from Morbe, Hetavane and Barvi reservoirs, the bulk of its 317 million litres per day (MLD) requirement coming from its own source, Morbe, from which it draws 250 MLD. CIDCO supplies another 30 MLD from Hetavane Dam and MIDC provides another 60 MLD.

The civic bodies in Thane, Kalyan-Dombivli, Ulhasnagar, Ambernath and Badlapur are not as confident. Thane has proposed a 14 per cent water cut from two of its three sources, the Shahpur-Temghar (STEM) scheme and MIDC, but can derive comfort from expectations that it will get water from a new scheme.

STEM supplies 120 MLD to Thane while MIDC supplies 100 MLD, both lifting from the river Ulhas. The civic body’s own scheme supplies 140 MLD from the river Bhatsa. “We will get 60-70 MLD extra with the commissioning of a supply augmentation project by the end of July. We hope that will buffer the impact of the water cut,” said executive engineer Samir Lahane.

Kalyan-Dombivli will face a 15 per cent water cut if the situation in the catchment areas does not improve by July 15. The municipal corporation has its own scheme and gets water also from the MIDC which draws from the Ulhas. It supplies about 240-245 MLD of which 95-100 MLD is supplied by MIDC and the remaining 140 MLD by its own scheme.

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