Water Starved Megapolis Mumbai Plans $500 Million Purifier

(Bloomberg) --

India’s financial hub Mumbai will build a new 41.2 billion rupee (about $500 million) treatment plant as the city grapples with solutions for its recurring water shortages.

Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the body managing the city’s civic affairs, awarded a contract to build and operate the water treatment plant with capacity to process 2,000 million liters daily to Welspun Enterprises. The project will be ready within four years and the company will also operate and maintain it for 15 years thereafter, Welspun said in a statement.

The water treatment plant will be one of the largest in the world in terms of capacity, the company said. The facility will be set up at the municipal body’s Bhandup complex, which supplies drinking water to city through some existing treatment plants. Welspun said it has partnered with Veolia, the Paris-based environmental-services behemoth, as its technology provider for the upcoming plant. Welspun gained the most in a year after the announcement.

Most of India’s big cities face water shortage and resort to supply cuts, especially during the summer months. This year, Mumbai announced a 15% cut in water supplies until March 5, after one of its pumping station was damaged in a fire. Last year, the city saw acute water shortage after a drop in reservoir levels, according to reports. 

Unprecedented heat waves may further exacerbate the shortages. The mercury is testing 50C (122F) during Indian summer, and scientists estimate climate change has made extreme heat 30 times more likely in India, and the country is likely to be one of the first places in the world where heat waves breach the human survivability threshold.

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