Thane Municipal Corporation fails to track mandatory rainwater harvesting systems
The Thane Municipal Corporation's (TMC) policy making rainwater harvesting mandatory for new buildings in Thane has failed to ease the city's central water supply burden due to a complete lack of post-completion monitoring and maintenance tracking between 2021 and June 2026. This governance gap comes at a critical time as delayed heavy rainfall and stagnant dam levels intensify concerns over the city's future water security.
According to civic records, Thane theoretically had roughly 1,250 functional rainwater harvesting projects by 2017. However, the municipal corporation’s actual data for recent years reveals a drastically lower rate of newly certified projects. Between 2021 and June 2026, only 638 new systems were registered as operational.
The year-by-year breakdown shows a steady decline in newly implemented systems over the last few fiscal years. During the 2021–22 fiscal year, 145 new systems were registered. This was followed by 139 systems in 2022–23, 170 systems in 2023–24, and 129 systems in 2024–25. Between January and June 2026, only 55 new systems were registered.
The overarching issue is a significant gap between policy and practice. While developers construct these units on paper to obtain their Occupancy Certificates (OC), the TMC does not trace whether housing societies actually maintain them. Consequently, the systems have failed to yield the expected results in easing the city's central water supply burden.
This struggle with urban water management is not new for the city. Environmental experts trace significant systemic failures back to June 2016, when Thane received approximately 850 mm of torrential rainfall. Due to a lack of effective city-wide catchment infrastructure, millions of liters of pristine water were lost as runoff into the local creek.
Additionally, the civic body has faced a sluggish response from housing societies reluctant to take up harvesting projects independently. Environmentalists and civic groups have previously urged the corporation to expand the initiative by offering promotional discounts or tax incentives to societies to successfully drive community adoption.
Without regular audits and community incentives, the question of whether these systems are actively running or structurally abandoned remains unanswered in official municipal logs. As a result, Thane continues to watch millions of liters of monsoon rain drain away into the local creek instead of replenishing its strained water tables.
