Sixty-six water tanks—several of them built during the British era, have been discovered in Mumbai—throwing light on the excellent water conservation and storage techniques. The water tanks are of immense heritage importance.
Shiv Sena corporator Prof Avkash Jadhav, who is behind the discoveries, started communicating with the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Maharashtra government.
“Three months ago I happened to see the board of BMC on the premises of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sanghrahlaya, the board stated Static Water tank A-4, it was in one isolated corner. I arranged for its opening and realised it has a capacity of 2,50,000 litres,” said Prof Jadhav. Two weeks ago, taking the clue from A-4, he started looking for other tanks of the ‘A’ series and got the information that there are six such water tanks only in A ward.
Over a period of two weeks, he tried to gather information diligently from other departments of the BMC like the hydraulic and emergency repairing services and they found out almost 66 Static Water Tanks from A to G wards of Greater Mumbai. “However out of 66 tanks, 13 tanks are either non-traceable or are surrounded by structures that have been built around them.
That means we have now only 53 traceable water tanks. In all the water storage could be 1 crore, 57 lakh litres,” he said. The tanks are uniform in size, it is 10 metre ×10 metre ×3 metre deep. They are still in very good condition and are fully concrete and strong in their establishment. “They are ready for water storage. In Mumbai these are pieces of heritage and history,” Prof Jadhav said.
Published 27 September 2016, 19:15 IST