40,00,000 litres of treated water goes down city drains everyday

As the state is reeling under drought since about a year now, the city’s civic body is asking people to cut down the usage of water and use millions of litres of water it recycles every day for non-drinking purposes.

However the repeated request seem to have fallen on deaf ears, except for two organisations – Mahalaxmi Racecourse and Willingdon Club – no resident, society or establishment has come forward to buy treated water.

It simply shows that people are still using fresh water from wells and borewells for non-drinking purposes, thereby depleting the scantly available natural resource.

The civic body has six sewage treatment plants that produce 5.55 million litres of water daily. Finding no takers, 3-4 million litres go to waste every day. As commercial organisations and residential societies don’t take this water, it goes straight into the sea.

Last December, the BMC had invited bids for the treated water, but nobody approached. To give it another shot, the BMC is planning to invite tenders yet again hoping that sense would prevail in at least some people this time.