Mumbai, known to face heavy rains and water-logging during monsoons, is hosting 2^nd Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group of G20 countries from 23-25 May, the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement.

The five key priority areas that will be taken up for discussions in the meeting are early warning, resilient infrastructure, national and international response, building back better and nature-based solutions.

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Mumbai remembers 26^th July, 2005 when the Mumbai Metropolitan Region witnessed record rainfall and subsequent flooding,which led to the loss of lives and properties.

The G20 delegates attending the 2^nd DRRWG meeting will be visiting the BMC’s Control Room to see how the Mumbai Municipal Corporation has put in place tech-based solutions to deal with heavy rainfall and flooding during monsoon.

After the 2005 Mumbai floods, the Government of Maharashtra had constituted the Madhavrao Chitale Fact Finding Committee, which in its report had directed to implement various measures including setting up of pumping stations in the BMC’s sensitive areas.

In Mumbai, the rainwater does not flow into the sea during high tide, the level of the seawater pushes the rainwater back on to the streets of the city which results in water logging at various low lying areas across Mumbai.

To avoid this and drain out water, the pumping stations push the rainwater into the sea with high power water pumps. This results in drainage of the rainwater very fast. These pumping stations play an important role in avoiding a possible disaster during heavy downpour, according to Additional Municipal Commissioner P Velrasu.

The BMC has built pumping stations and underground water storage tanks for speedy clearance of rainwater. Considering the geographical location of Mumbai and effective drainage of the rainwater during heavy downpour, six pumping stations are operational at Haji Ali, Lovegrove (Worli), Cleveland Bunder (Worli Village), Britannia (Reay Road), Irla (Juhu) and Gazadhar bandh (Santacruz).

Two more pumping stations will be added soon. Smaller pumping stations are also operational at some other locations in Mumbai. There are 43 pumps in these six operational pumping stations and each pump has an installed capacity to lift 6000 litres of water per second.

It means that the collective water lifting capacity of these pumps is 2.58 lakh litres of water per second. These pumps are computerized and automatically become functional after heavy rain when the rainwater flows towards the pumping stations.

BMC has also built an underground storage tank in ‘Late Pramod Mahajan Park’ area in Parel. This was built to deal with the problem of monsoon water logging in the Hindmata area of Parel. The accumulated water during heavy rains is pumped and stored in this tank.

During the monsoon of 2022, as much as two crore liters of water could be stored in the underground reservoir. Due to this, water did not accumulate in the area during the last year’s rainy season.

The Delegates of the G20 countries visiting the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation control room will be informed of all these steps taken by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to address the issue of water logging due to heavy rainfall.