To facilitate widening of city nullahs, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to demolish about 24,000 hutments located on the banks of these nullahs after monsoon.
To facilitate widening of city nullahs, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to demolish about 24,000 hutments located on the banks of these nullahs after monsoon.
Civic chief Ajoy Mehta announced this at the inauguration ceremony of Britannia pumping station at Reay Road on Wednesday.
“The length of the major and the minor nullahs in the city is around 13,000 kms which is equivalent to the distance between Mumbai to New Delhi and vice versa. Even after carrying out desilting works, slum dwellers keep dumping garbage and scrap in the nullahs. We will start razing the hutments, which are built near the nullahs. The plan is to widen them so that the flow of water is not obstructed during monsoon.”
According to the civic officials, the BMC as a part of its pre-monsoon preparations carry out desilting of city nullahs.
The civic body collects the silt taken out from the nullahs and ferry it to the dump spots. But people living on the banks of nullahs and nearby areas continue to dump waste material, which includes garbage, plastic bags, bottles, thermacoal, even broken furniture like chairs, tables and sofa-sets.
There are around 10,000 shanties built near the minor nullahs and 14,000 near the major nullahs.
Mr Mehta also said that the newly commissioned Britannia pumping station would ensure that there is no water logging at chronic spots like Hindmata for several hours like it used to happen earlier.
“Previously even with 40mm of rain in an hour, water logging would take place for up to 18 hours at Hindmata but now with 60mm of rain too we are able to clear the water in two hours.
The last few days there was up to 70mm of rain and yet we were able to manage very well,” he added.
