Climate Change is Real, Action Plan Needed, Says Aaditya Thackeray as Torrential Rains Flood Mumbai Again

As Mumbai once again gets flooded due to heavy rains, Maharashtra environment minister Aaditya Thackeray on Wednesday said climate change has become a real thing and stressed on undertaking mitigation measures as part of a larger action plan to deal with the phenomenon.

He visited the headquarters of the BMC, controlled by his party Shiv Sena, to take stock of the situation after overnight torrential rains flooded parts of Mumbai and disrupted rail and road traffic on Wednesday in what has become an annual occurrence during the monsoon.

In a series of tweets, Thackeray said parts of Mumbai have received over 83 per cent of the annual normal September rainfall in less than 12 hours.

“Flood water pumped out=1 Tulsi lake (reservoir supplying water to Mumbai,” hetweeted.

“However, 15 years on, with more climate change and increasing extreme weather events, and as we await final clearances on Mahul and Mogra Nallah pumping stations, we have begun to look at creating underground flood control tanks and rain water percolation systems,” he wrote on the micro- blogging site.

The minister said hehad requested civic officials to work actively and expeditiously on underground flood control tanks as extreme rainfall events increase every year, breaking records of the past few decades.

“Extreme weather events now arent rare anymore. Climate change is a real thing.

“Weve seen record break temperatures, rainfall, storms, droughts and floods in our country over the past few years,” said Thackeray, who also holds the tourism portfolio.

“We need to act on climate change mitigation and action as a larger action plan.

“The 2005 cloud burst (in Mumbai) resulted in the BRIMSTOWAD project of pumping stations and increasing storm water drain capacity to 50mm/hour.

“This brings back our coastal city back to normal within a few hours of extreme rainfall. Today we pumped out a volume equal to Tulsi lake,” he said.

The Brihanmumbai Storm Water Disposal (BRIMSTOWAD) project was started after the 2005 deluge to overhaul Mumbais decades-old drains.