As May 31 Deadline Comes To Close How Prepared Is Mumbai For Monsoons

Gearing up for the monsoon, departments across Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) have been at work to implement a slew of measures to prevent flooding in Mumbai this season. In Mumbai, the official date of monsoon onset is June 11. In Mumbai, the official date of monsoon onset is June 11. While the date of onset differs each year, typically May 31 is set as the final deadline for all pre-monsoon preparedness activities in the city ranging from desilting, cleaning to deployment of dewatering machinery as the due date to close civil road construction works like the ongoing concretisation project. Drawing lessons from the previous year when a historically early onset of monsoon on May 26 caught the administration unaware and underprepared, the BMC set an early deadline for several works like procurement and deployment of flood mitigation machinery. However, this year too, May 31 was earmarked as the final deadline for completion of pre-monsoon works like tree trimming exercise and desilting of Mumbai’s major and minor drains as well as the Mithi river. With the May 31 target coming to close and southwest monsoon fast approaching, The Indian Express takes stock of the BMC’s monsoon preparedness to assess the city’s readiness for the upcoming season. An annual exercise, desilting of Mumbai’s big and minor storm water drains as well as the Mithi river is carried out by the BMC to increase the holding capacity of the waterbed and prevent flooding. Of the total target, the civic body aims to extract 80 percent of silt during pre-monsoon period, 10 percent during monsoon and 10 percent during the post-monsoon period. This year, the BMC had set a May 31 deadline to extract 8.41 lakh metric tonnes of silt as a part of its pre-monsoon desilting exercise across the city’s minor, major drains and Mithi river. However, the civic body has only been able to achieve 69 percent of its total desilting target at Mithi river until Sunday (May 31) morning. In contrast, the BMC has achieved 100 percent of its target for the city’s major and minor nullahs. When contacted, a senior official told The Indian Express, “We are aiming to achieve 75 percent of our target for Mithi river before the onset of monsoon. During the desilting exercise, special focus was laid on clearing silt from the flood prone pockets of the river. While 100 percent of the target would have been ideal, we are confident that even 75 percent of the target conditions of flooding at Mithi river will be mitigated.” Desilting of Mithi river is crucial to avoid overflow of river water and deluge in nearby slum pockets as well as major routes in the vicinity. Last year, for instance, slum pockets of Kranti Nagar were inundated after waters at Mithi river breached the danger levels and overflowed into the streets. Even as desilting of Mithi typically commences on March 1, this year, the work was delayed owing to delayed appointment of contractors over lack of adequate interest from