Mumbai: The Bombay high court has disposed of a petition filed when garbage had spread along the Mumbai seashore last year. The court directed the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)  to make proper arrangements for disposal of sewage water into the sea and submit a quarterly progress report to the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB).

A bench of Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice N.M. Jamdar was hearing a PIL filed by NGO, Citizen Circle for Social Welfare and Education, in 2017. After seeing the polluted water around the coastal area of Mumbai, the NGO approached the court saying that the water was dangerous to the entire ecosystem, and the public at large had been complaining about the same. The petition sought direction to the concerned authorities to frame guidelines on garbage and debris disposal and its discharge into the sea.

The direction came after advocate Shehzad Naqvi informed that the city civic authority was una-ble to prevent the discharge of untreated waste into the Mithi River that flowed into the Arabian Sea.

The court was informed by MPCB counsel Sharm-ila Deshmukh that the BMC’s sewage network did not connect the entire city and therefore, the existing sewage treatment plants (STPs) were working below their capacity.

As per the affidavit filed by the MPCB, while the total capacity of the city's STPs was (treating) 2,595 million litres per day (mld) of waste, they were treating only 2,016 mld. BMC counsel Anil Sakhre told the court that the civic body was aware of the problem and was planning to lay down new sewer lines in the city. He said around 2,012 km of new sewer lines had to be laid down across the city.

The BMC had also commissioned eight new STPs, advocate Sakhre told the court. The court said that the BMC was duty-bound to ensure that all the sewage generated in the city was treated at the several STPs managed by the civic body.