The Shivaji Nagar slum near Worli Koliwada and the Nehru Planetarium are two of the five slum clusters for which the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will construct seven sewage treatment facilities. Before BMC undertook a reclamation drive for the Coastal Road project, these slum areas were situated near the edge of South Mumbai’s west coast and had discharged their sewage directly into the sea.
The BMC’s business incubation centre for entrepreneurs, known as the Society for Mumbai Incubation Lab to Entrepreneurship (SMILE) Council, has taken on the development of the mini-STPs (Sewage Treatment Plants), which is being set up by one of the start-ups funded by the civic body. It uses technology developed by the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) to recycle all the water without discharging any sewage.
The slum clusters do not have enough links to the sewerage network, according to a senior city official. They directly release their waste into the sea, but the development of the coastal roads has interrupted that channel. The time has come to connect the entire network to the new STPs and begin source-based sewage treatment.
The daily capacity of each STP will range from 50 to 400 kiloliters. “As we consider decentralised sewage treatment, this will fundamentally alter the city. We intend to duplicate it in further slum areas, the official said.
The BMC proposed the SMILE council in its annual budget for 2018 as a special purpose vehicle to assist company owners in turning their ideas into profitable ventures while fostering Mumbai’s social and infrastructure growth.
