by Kunal Chonkar, originally posted on July 26, 2016

Water contamination continues to spread rapidly throughout the city. As per the latest data available with the civic body, there were 124 cases of water contamination in the past 24 days. And once again, the suburban stretches of the city are grappling with infections and epidemics spread through drinking water.

According to the record, the trend of water contamination, which was earlier seen in areas like R-Central and R-South wards of Mumbai has now spread to K-East and West, M-East as well as P-North and P-South wards — enveloping most of the northern and eastern suburban regions.

“Apart from the complaints reporting foul smelling, yellow-coloured and at times water mixed with muck and dirt, this time around several complaint calls claimed to report worms,” a civic official from the hydraulic department said.

He added that till Monday the civic body had resolved 56 cases and work was being carried out on war-footing to resolve the remaining as well.

Statistics showed that maximum cases were found in areas of Dahisar, Borivli, Malad, Magathane, Charkop and Lokhandwala Complex. Complaints were also growing viciously in Andheri region with several residents complaining of different-colored water and even reported incidents of earthworms flowing from tap water.

The localities of Mankhurd, Govandi, Shivaji Nagar, Mulund, Bhandup and Vikhroli were also seen raising voices on contaminated flow with round a dozen calls in past one week.

The civic body accounted of having found a surge of E-Coli bacteria, associated with water-borne diseases, being found in water samples from these areas as well.

In the month of June, the civic body had witnessed 40 complaints on water contamination, which were attributed to the corroded sewage and water pipelines running parallel resulting in mixing of the two liquids. As per yesteryear figure, the water contamination levels in 2013-14 and 2012-13 were 10.84 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively.

4 deaths due to leptospirosis

In last one week, the city has witnessed as many as four leptospirosis deaths, said Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). This monsoon, so far four people have died of leptospirosis and incidentally all the deaths happened in July. “We have visited 1,730 houses and screened 8,260 people but didn’t find any more cases with symptoms of leptospirosis. We have immunised 5,994 digs with lepto vaccine and inspected 326 cattle sheds,” said Dr Padmaja Keskar, executive health officer, BMC.