In a major step towards water conservation, close to 30% of BMC gardens have got water harvesting percolation pits over the last year. This means rainwater, which otherwise goes down the drain, gets stored in the pits and can be used for garden maintenance throughout the year.Until now, fresh water was used to water plants and lawns and for other cleaning works at civic gardens. There are a total of 1,068 gardens and the BMC has constructed 1,500 suction pits in 300 of them. Officials plan to build these pits in another 700 gardens.
Though Mumbai receives heavy rainfalls during the monsoon season every year. Most of the water goes down the drain. Officials feel that if Mumbai collects around 70% of the water on these total roofed areas through rain harvesting methods, the city could have easily collected a lakh-plus million liter of water.
There are six lakes, most of which are outside the city limits, totally supplying 3,400 million liters of water per day to Mumbai and its suburbs. During the monsoon season, most of the extra water goes waste. If both the rainwater harvesting and overflow of lake water could be arrested, the city could be able to get over1,75,000 million litres of water.