A team from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee decided that repairs rather than reconstruction are feasible for the Malabar Hill Reservoir (MHR) in their most recent final report, which was submitted to city authorities. To enable the repairs without interfering with the water supply, the paper suggests building a new backup tank.
Nearly a year after work on building a second tank to rebuild the 144-year-old Malabar Hill reservoir began, the civic authority was given a new report from another IIT. Three of the reservoir's five subsections, which hold 80 million litres of water, are in good shape and do not require significant repairs, according to the IIT Roorkee experts, while the other two exhibit structural deterioration. Months must pass while the sections are closed for repairs, and an extra tank is required to ensure that the neighbouring areas always have access to water.
Experts from IIT Roorkee disregarded the necessity for reservoir reconstruction after inspecting MHR in early June. The study, which was turned in to the BMC last week, stresses how crucial it is to have a backup plan for your water supply before starting any repairs.
A top official in the civic body said that we need to have a backup plan for the water supply before we start any repairs. Initially, many of the surrounding fully grown trees would have been affected by the construction of a new tank. Our goal is to guarantee that the local gardens and vegetation will be as little affected as possible by the construction of the alternative tank. A maintenance checklist for routine reservoir maintenance will also be supplied by the knowledgeable team.
Given that the project called for the removal of multiple older trees in order to rebuild the reservoir, the locals were furious about it. Residents fiercely opposed the project because it also included the demolition of the famous Hanging Garden. An eight-member committee was thus formed to determine the future of MHR in November 2023 following the intervention of Mangal Prabhat Lodha, the guardian minister for the suburbs.
Still, the panel was divided into two sections: the architects and citizen representatives' group came from IIT-B, and the BMC official was the impartial member of both groups. Deep confusion was created as a result of the two parties' contradictory reports. The BMC asked IIT Roorkee for their input in order to address the matter.
Concurrently, during the first few days of June 2024, Mangal Prabhat Lodha declared that the initial plan to rebuild the reservoir would be abandoned. A hundred-year-old reservoir located beneath the Hanging Garden provides south Mumbai with 147 million litres of water daily. The plan for its renovation and augmentation, which was projected to cost INR 698 crore, was accepted in February 2022.
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