Rs 15,048 crore allocated to contain urban flooding, but multiple areas inundated

Indian Express

15 hours ago

Despite the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) spending thousands of crores in flood prevention, several parts of Mumbai went under water on Tuesday as heavy rains created havoc in the maximum city. The BMC in its climate budget for the financial year 2025-26 had earmarked Rs 15,048 crore for urban flooding and water resource management–accounting for 88 per cent of the overall climate budget and 20 per cent of BMC's overall annual civic budget of Rs 74,400 crore.
The allocated amount also includes the Rs 2,200 crore fund, which the BMC had earmarked for the storm water department (SWD) which is responsible for the flood mitigation in the ongoing financial year. The civic officials, however, attributed the waterlogging and flooding across the city to the continuous heavy rain.
Data recorded in the BMC's automatic weather system (AWS) showed that several areas in Mumbai recorded rain exceeding the 300-mm mark on Tuesday.
According to the BMC's data, some of the pockets that recorded very high rain include the Chincholi (Malad) which recorded 369 mm of rain, followed by 337 mm at Kandivali, 305 mm at Dindoshi, 300 mm each at Dadar and Magathane, 293 mm at Vikhroli, 290 mm at Powai, 288 mm at Mulund and 265 mm at Fosburry (Azad Maidan – Colaba).
As rain intensified during the wee hours of Tuesday, almost all these areas got submerged disrupting traffic and regular flow of life. The BMC's ambitious Rs 130 crore pumping station at Hind Mata also didn't come effective as the entire junction went under water for the second consecutive day on Tuesday. The BMC officials also said that in the past four days more than 1,600 crore litres of water have been channelled out of Mumbai which is twice the storage capacity of Tulsi Lake that has a capacity of 800 crore litre.
'Between August 16 and 19, all the six pumping stations of Mumbai along with 540 portable dewatering pumps were working continuously and during this period a total of 1,645 crore litre of water have been channelled out from Mumbai by these pumps collectively,' an official said.
The six pumping stations are located at Haji Ali, Worli, Cleveland Bunder, Reay Road, Irla (Khar) and Gazdarbandh (Juhu). In total, these facilities house 43 pumps and civic officials maintained that they have been operating for over 761 hours between the four-day period.
'Even though the pumps are operating relentlessly, the water is still accumulating at certain places because no city is equipped to handle 100 mm of rain within few hours. Earlier on Monday we recorded 200 mm of rain within a five-hour period and on Tuesday the quantum of rain rose to 300 mm. In addition to this there was also a high tide because of which there was an automatic inflow of water since the outfalls continued to stay underwater for many hours leading to delayed discharge of water,' said the official.
'Therefore, it was quite obvious that water will accumulate for few hours. After a two-hour period, regular movement of trains resumed and by 5 pm water started to recede from places,' the official added.
Further, the BMC's data showed that of the six pumping stations, the highest quantum of water was channelled out from Irla pumping station at 3,768 million litres, followed by 2,906 million litres at Cleveland Bunder and 2,870 million litres at Gazdarbandh. Besides these, the 540 dewatering pumps had channelled out 182.5 crore litres of water on Tuesday within a six-hour period.