The Hindu Business Line : Tide rises, but not the rainfall level in Mumbai

Nine-year ‘high’: Slums in Bandra in suburban Mumbai faced the fury of the sea waves on Friday. The Mumbai Municipal Corporation announced the highest tide of the year, 5.5m on Friday.

Our Bureau

Mumbai, July 24 Even as Mumbai braced for its highest tide of 5.05 metres in nine years on Friday, with schools, colleges and corporate houses declaring a holiday, it turned out to be a damp squib of sorts with only 18.9 mm rainfall in Colaba and 56.1 mm in Santa Cruz.

However, the Municipal Commissioner of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), Dr Jairaj Phatak, has warned “The city will have to be prepared for such high tides in the coming years due to global warming. MCGM is thinking of calling experts from Amsterdam as they have experience in preventing sea water ingress.

“Lessons could also be learnt from cities such as Barcelona and New York, which has experience in controlling floods.

“We can understand the issues only by experiments and not by dogma,” he said, addressing the media at the civic headquarters.

Russian expertise

“St Petersburg (Russia), which also suffers from the same problems, constructed a big dam, which helped them control sea flooding.

“Since MCGM has sister city relationship with that city, we would be learning from them.

“We will also conduct studies, take help of experts from IIT Bombay to cope with the situation” Dr Phatak said.

Commenting on Friday’s situation, he said, high tide came, but fortunately, there were no heavy rains, nor were Vihar Powai and Tulsi lakes overflowing.

“The invasion of water was from the sea and not from the sky in form of rains or from the east in the form of overflowing lakes; otherwise, the city would have been in trouble” he said.

“Yesterday, the gates of Irla storm-water canal were closed due to which water spread in Mora village but today MCGM opened the gates but it resulted in flooding in Juhu Vile Parle Development area.

“Therefore, we are experimenting with various ways to deal with the situation and it will give a perspective for future flood prevention planning” Dr Phatak said.

Rescue teams

Ms Manisha Mhaiskar, Joint Municipal Commissioner, MCGM, said that given the high tide experience of last two days, rescue teams were stationed at Cuffe Parade, Worli, Versova and Bandstand.

Alert messages were disseminated to the affected residents and they voluntarily relocated to safer places, she said.

Dr Phatak also announced that the Modak Sagar, which is a major lake which supplies water to the city, started overflowing on Thursday night.

However, other lakes are yet to fill up to their capacity.

Out of the total requirement of 13 million litres of water a day, the city has only about six million litres, which is about 46 per cent of the total requirement, therefore, the 15 per cent water cut will stay until the lakes get additional rains, he said.

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