Good news: Upper Vaitarna records 49 mm rain in 3 days

“A good start.” That’s what municipal officers are saying after the catchments areas of the six lakes that supply water to the city received pre-monsoon showers.

“A good start.”

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That’s what municipal officers are saying after the catchments areas of the six lakes that supply water to the city received pre-monsoon showers.

On Tuesday, Upper Vaitarna recorded 44 mm of rainfall.

Until Thursday, Upper Vaitarna received a total of 49 millimetre (mm) of rainfall, while Tansa and Modak Sagar received 2 mm of rainfall each.

The light showers continued on Thursday, with Modak Sagar recording 2 mm of rainfall and Upper Vaitarna receiving 5 mm of rainfall. Bhatsa recorded 1 mm of rainfall.

“It’s an early and a good start,” said Vinay Deshpande, Chief Hydraulic Engineer.

The municipal corporation is hoping that this year’s monsoon will help the city that is battling water scarcity owing to the poor and delayed monsoon last year.

The municipal body has levied 15 per cent water cut on residential users and a 30 per cent cut on commercial units.

Currently, the city gets only 2,900 MLD of water as against a demand of 4,200 MLD from the six lakes that supply water — Tulsi, Vihar, Modak Sagar, Tansa, Bhatsa and Upper Vaitarna. The current total water stock in all the six lakes is 1.01 lakh million litres. It was 2.4 lakh million litres last year.

“We have sufficient water stock that will last till July 15 But we are hoping that the monsoon will arrive by then,” Additional Municipal Commissioner Anil Diggikar had said.

However, the municipal corporation is not keen on carrying out artificial rain augmenting process, which they had done last year. “This year we are not keen on conducting cloudseeding experiments,” said Deshpande.