Civic body lifts 20% water cut

With heavy downpour filling up lakes supplying water to Mumbai, the civic body on Wednesday decided to lift the 20% water cut it imposed on the city after poor rainfall last year

Good rain this monsoon has washed away the city’s water woes. With heavy downpour filling up lakes supplying water to Mumbai, the civic body on Wednesday decided to lift the 20% water cut it imposed on the city after poor rainfall last year.

The BMC withdrew the 20% water cut imposed on the city because of heavy rain for the past few days.(Hindustan Times)

Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials said there is enough water to meet the city’s needs for the next 167 days. Heavy rainfall in the past 24 hours itself has added 10 days of water to stock – it increased by 40,000 million litres in a day. This means the city has met 54.79 % of its requirement till July.

Starting October 1, Mumbai needs 14.37 lakh million litres of water to go without water cuts till July 2017 – this is about 3,750 million litres a day. But poor rainfall last year led to water cuts from August 29, 2015, allowing the BMC reduce supply to 3,200 million litres a day.

“The rainfall in catchment areas is 33% more than the rainfall in July in the past 10 years. The administration is now revoking the water cut imposed on the city,” said Sanjay Mukherjee, the additional municipal commissioner.

On Wednesday, there was 7.93 lakh million litres of water in the seven lakes that supply water to the city. This is about 5 lakh million litres more than what was recorded last year this time. Six of these lakes – Modak Sagar, Tansa, Vehar, Upper Vaitarna, Bhatsa and Middle Vaitarna – are in Thane and Palghar, while the Tulsi lake is in suburban Powai.

BMC figures show the current water stock is 64% more than water stock in the past 10 years. Bhatsa, which caters to more than 50% of Mumbai’s water needs, has 3.9 lakh million litres, compared to only 70,000 million litres in 2015.