Lake level crosses 70%, Mumbai has water stock till April 2022: BMC

Owing to heavy rainfall in Mumbai and its neighbouring areas in the past two weeks, water levels in the seven lakes supplying drinking water to the city crossed 70% on Wednesday

Owing to heavy rainfall in Mumbai and its neighbouring areas in the past two weeks, water levels in the seven lakes supplying drinking water to the city crossed 70% on Wednesday. The city now has a water stock of around 260 days that will last till April 2022.

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Civic officials said it was very likely that the city might not have any water cuts this year. However, it will continue monitoring rainfall throughout August. A BMC official said, “Total lake level going above 85%-90% is considered to be safe, even 70% is safe, but we also need to have rainfall in August to not have any water cuts.”

According to BMC’s data, four lakes — Tulsi, Vihar, Tansa and Modak Sagar — have overflowed so far. These lakes have 100% water stock except for Tansa which has 99% stock. Tulsi Lake, located inside the city, was the first to overflow on July 16 followed by Vihar Lake on July 18 and Modak Sagar and Tansa on July 22.

Last year on July 28, the total water stock in the seven lakes was 32% and it was 75% in 2019.

Bhatsa, which supplies 55% of the total annual water requirement, has 64% water as compared to 36% last year at this time. Upper Vaitarna has 48% water as of Tuesday. Last year at this time, it had only 9%. The water level at Middle Vaitarna is 68% as compared to 32% last year at this time.

The seven lakes are bifurcated into two systems — the Vaitarna system which supplies to western suburbs and island city, and the Bhatsa system which supplies to eastern suburbs. The lakes are situated in Mumbai as well as neighbouring Thane and Palghar districts.

The civic body supplies 3,850 million litres of water daily against the city’s demand for 4,200 million litres. In order to meet the shortfall, BMC has been exploring several ways to increase water supply. Two weeks ago, the civic body signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with an Israel-based firm for the city’s first desalination project at Manori in Malad. Under this project, BMC plans to turn seawater into drinking water, and the pilot project is expected to be ready by 2025.