More garbage than water: India struggles to save the Mithi river

India’s waste management problem has been known for years, and the Mithi River is a stark example of how serious it has become. Flowing through the bustling city of Mumbai, this river has been overwhelmed by sewage and garbage due to the activities of local residents and the numerous industrial facilities built along its banks. Although local authorities are trying to combat the pollution, environmental organizations argue that their efforts are too little and too slow.

The Mithi river as a dump and sewer

The Mithi is one of four rivers flowing through Mumbai, a vast Indian metropolis home to around 21 million people. It originates in the city’s Vihar and Powai lakes and passes through both residential and industrial areas before emptying into the Arabian Sea. Interestingly, mithi means sweet water in both Hindi and Urdu—a name that now seems bitterly ironic given the river’s current condition.

Initially, the Mithi played a crucial role as Mumbai’s natural stormwater drainage system, helping to prevent widespread flooding. This function became especially significant after the city experienced a devastating flood in 2005 that claimed around 1,000 lives.

However, in the absence of adequate regulations and with the tacit approval of local authorities, the river has come to be treated as a dumping ground for garbage and a channel for wastewater by nearby residents and industries.

It’s estimated that as much as 93% of the waste found in the river comes from Mumbai’s own population, primarily in the form of plastic packaging, bottles, and cigarette butts. The river is also connected to a sewer system that carries household wastewater from nearby residential areas. Mumbai produces an average of 2.3 million liters of sewage daily.

Industrial pollution adds to the problem. Around 7% of the river’s waste comes from over 1,500 legal factories and more than 3,000 illegal facilities established along its banks. These unfiltered discharges include not only solid waste like plastic, metals, and debris, but also dissolved chemical waste, cement, and concrete. Data shows that between 80 to 110 tons of waste are dumped into the Mithi every day.

Visible efforts, but not enough

Managing a problem of this scale in a city as large as Mumbai is a monumental challenge for local authorities. Still, they continue to make efforts to clean up the river. For instance, in 2015, 100 industrial units near the Mithi received closure notices, and by 2018, another 200 had their electricity and water supplies cut off. In recent years, at least 700 small industrial units near the river have been shut down.

In June 2019, Ramdas Kadam, then Environment Minister of Maharashtra—the state of which Mumbai is the capital—announced the launch of a large-scale project to build a sewage and wastewater treatment system along the Mithi River. The estimated cost of the project was over 21 billion Indian rupees (approximately 920 million PLN).

Activists demand stricter regulations and targeted action

Environmental activists from the organization Earth5R are dissatisfied with these initiatives, warning that they will only bring short-term relief to the river. They point out that pollution and exploitation will increase as urbanization intensifies around the Mithi. According to them, the local government must prioritize overhauling Mumbai’s sewer system to divert wastewater away from the river while also establishing an effective waste disposal infrastructure. They also argue that strict regulations prohibiting further pollution of the river must be enforced.

Activists see potential in educational campaigns initiated by various environmental organizations as a key step toward long-term change.