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Mumbai’s INR 5,000 crore Gargai Dam reflects yet another engineering fix—extractive, linear, and at odds with circular and climate-resilient water solutions.
Image Source: Getty
Mumbai’s long-delayed Gargai Dam project, sanctioned by the Government of Maharashtra at an estimated cost of Rs 5,000 crore, marks another chapter in the city’s growing reliance on distant water sources to meet its ever-increasing demands. As of 2025, out of Mumbai’s seven primary water sources, only two (Tulsi and Vihar lakes) lie within the city’s perimeters, with the remaining located in the neighbouring districts of Thane, Palghar, and Nashik—at distances ranging from 100 to 175 km. They are connected through an extensive 5,000 km pipeline network. Mumbai currently receives 3,850 million litres of water per day (MLD), but the water demand is projected to rise to 5,940 MLD by 2041. Designed to supply 440 MLD from over 200 km away in the Palghar district, the Gargai Dam project reflects a broader trend seen in multiple Indian cities: pursuing far-off resources instead of investing in sustainable and local alternative solutions.
Without a shift towards demand-side management, localised sustainable practices (waterbody rejuvenation, rainwater harvesting, wastewater reuse), and a circular urban water system, Mumbai risks locking itself into an unsustainable cycle of dependency, ecological degradation, and mounting infrastructural and climate vulnerability.
The city has a long history of supply-side augmentation projects, dating back to 1860 when the city’s first piped water system was built by drawing 32 MLD from the Vihar reservoir (which currently supplies 90 MLD). As the city grew, new reservoirs such as Tulsi (18 MLD), built in 1879, and large-scale projects such as the Tansa scheme (455 MLD), constructed in 1892, progressively extended Mumbai’s hydrogeography into distant catchments. This approach continued after independence, with major dams including—Lower Vaitarna (455 MLD), Upper Vaitarna (640 MLD), Bhatsa (2020 MLD), and Middle Vaitarna (455 MLD)—being built to address the city’s water needs. However, this model reinforces a linear expansion and extraction cycle, raising a pressing question: How long can these quick fixes continue? Are we truly building resilience, or are we increasing environmental risks, deepening inequalities, and drifting further from the sustainable, circular water systems that the cities urgently need?
Without a shift towards demand-side management, localised sustainable practices (waterbody rejuvenation, rainwater harvesting, wastewater reuse), and a circular urban water system, Mumbai risks locking itself into an unsustainable cycle of dependency, ecological degradation, and mounting infrastructural and climate vulnerability.
Large water infrastructure projects such as the Gargai Dam are often justified based on the city’s mounting water crisis, vexed by a demand-supply gap, which could only be bridged by tapping into new and distant sources. In the case of Mumbai, scholars have challenged this narrative by arguing that the estimates for 2041 suggest that 95 percent of the city’s population will live in non-slum, planned settlements, using 240 litres per capita per day (lpcd) for domestic use. This estimate is higher than the 150 lpcd benchmark for metro cities as advocated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA). The remaining 5 percent of residents, assumed to live in slums, are projected to require 150 lpcd. With nearly half of Mumbai’s population living in slums, the aforementioned projection is rather ambitious. Furthermore, slum settlements often lack basic amenities such as in-house toilets or water storage facilities, making a demand estimate of 150 lpcd arguably overstated.
Such inflated projections justify expensive and ecologically disruptive water projects, while sidestepping more urgent reforms such as fixing leaky and ageing pipelines, reducing distribution losses, and ensuring equitable water distribution within the city. Today, more than three-quarters of the world’s largest cities rely on surface water bodies located farther from the cities. These long-distance water transfers come at high social, ecological, economic, and political costs. They are energy-intensive and contribute to fiscal and carbon costs, often unaddressed in mainstream public discourse. Additionally, the source regions in this case, Palghar district, are often water-stressed, particularly in dry seasons. Therefore, the dependence on far-off sources with erratic flow regimes increases Mumbai’s exposure to future water insecurities. Building city resilience, thus, should begin by reducing, not amplifying, such hydrological dependencies. Large infrastructure projects such as Gargai tend to lock cities into high-maintenance and energy-heavy systems, which risk becoming financially unsustainable over time.
Arguably, a comprehensive framework for urban water circularity remains a largely absent facet in Mumbai’s water system. Circular water systems aim to minimise waste, reuse resources, and promote local sustainability—for instance, through wastewater recycling and reuse, stormwater and rainwater harvesting, aquifer recharge, and local waterbody rejuvenation.
The city currently generates about 2190 MLD of sewage daily, out of which 22.65 MLD is recycled and used for non-potable purposes. Much of it is inadequately treated and discharged into the sea following a linear ‘source to sea’ flow, spelling out the very antithesis of resilience thinking. However, under the Mumbai Sewage Disposal Project II, seven Sewage Treatment Plants are being planned at INR 26,000 crores across— Worli, Bandra, Dharavi, Versova, Malad, Ghatkopar, and Bhandup— with the treatment capacity of 2,464 MLD of sewage per day. With this plan, the city is already steering towards a water surplus trajectory. The question, however, persists: What could be the rationale for a distant water supply augmentation such as the Gargai dam project?
Reducing NRW will significantly add to the city’s water supply. The immediate measures required would be to closely monitor the distribution network for leak detection, replace old pipes, bulk metering to measure the inflows and outflows, and manage pressure along the distribution system.
Equally important for urban water circularity is managing the city’s Non-Revenue Water (NRW), which refers to the unaccounted-for water in the region, the distribution losses due to system leakages, water thefts, unauthorised consumption, and subsidised water supply. Nearly 34 percent of Mumbai’s existing water supply, which is about 1,343 million litres per day, is lost to pipe leakages, water theft, and system inefficiencies. Reducing NRW will significantly add to the city’s water supply. The immediate measures required would be to closely monitor the distribution network for leak detection, replace old pipes, bulk metering to measure the inflows and outflows, and manage pressure along the distribution system.
Mumbai also has a rich history of a network of water tanks and wells, such as Cowasji Patel Tank, Framji Cowasji Tank, Banganga Tank, and Bhikaji Behram Tank, that served as vital sources of drinking water for the city before the 1860 Virar lake project. Most were later filled up as a part of the sanitisation project during the British regime, or neglected as piped water infrastructure took precedence. Losing these tanks and wells is also the loss of Mumbai’s decentralised water heritage of community-led water sources. Reviving and integrating them into the present strategies for urban water resilience would be a sustainable and circular way forward.
The Gargai project raises important concerns about the stakeholders expected to benefit from such augmentation strategies and those who would bear the cost. In this case, the project will primarily impact two villages in Wada taluka in Palghar district – Ogda and Khodade – displacing around 2,500 people and cutting down 2.1 lakh trees. Ironically, Palghar, being a water-stressed region, reflects the uneven tradeoffs of such projects. In this development paradigm, peri-urban and rural communities are often transformed into ‘resource colonies’ for urban centres, with land, water, and forests extracted to fuel urban growth with marginal or no ‘trickle down’ benefit. This forces us to confront a larger, uncomfortable question: Can cities continue to pursue the present growth path and still claim to be sustainable? Therefore, are cities, as a concept, sustainable at all?
In this development paradigm, peri-urban and rural communities are often transformed into ‘resource colonies’ for urban centres, with land, water, and forests extracted to fuel urban growth with marginal or no ‘trickle down’ benefit.
Equity in access to urban water supply is also central to the framework of urban and climate resilience. In 2022, providing water connections to unmapped slum clusters in the city, which lacked essential civic services, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) implemented their ‘Water for All’ policy. However, a 2022 study reveals that marginalised communities and residents of non-notified settlements continue to face the disproportionate economic and social impacts of poor water access and are often victims of administrative precarity.
Thus, without participatory governance focusing on equity and access, projects such as the Gargai dam risk reinforcing existing disparities instead of addressing them, by shifting the burden onto already vulnerable communities, whether through displacement, ecological loss, or continued marginalisation in service delivery.
Supply-side augmentation approach to achieving urban water security undermines the crucial need for circular, climate-resilient approaches that prioritise demand-side management, decentralised water systems, and the rejuvenation of urban waterbodies. To ensure climate resilience, the city must transition from extractive to regenerative and inclusive water strategies. This requires an overhaul of existing hydro-geographies and the ethics of sourcing, distributing, and governing water in our urban futures.
Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow at the Urban Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation.
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Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with ORF’s Urban Studies Programme. Her research interests span the intersections of environment and development, urban studies, water governance, Water, ...
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