Mumbai’s seven lakes and dams that provide drinking water to the city have stock that will last only 42 days, fueling concerns of an impending crisis due to delayed monsoon, Hindustan Times reported on Sunday. The dry spell is also likely to affect the city at a time when it is battling the coronavirus outbreak.
As of June 21, the seven lakes have useful water stock of 1.54 lakh litres, while the total storage capacity is 14.47 lakh litres. Last year, the city had 82,829 litres of water. However, this year’s water stock is less than the 13.09% recorded in 2018 during the same time.
However, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which supplies 3,750 million litres of water daily, assured people that there was no need to panic. Additional Municipal Commissioner of the Hydraulic Department P Velrasu said that the weather department has predicted normal rainfall in Mumbai. “So far the rainfall in Upper Vaitarna and Middle Vaitarna and some other dams are better than last year,” he told the newspaper. “The water levels in these dams are also higher than last year. So there is nothing to worry about availability of water as of now.”
The seven lakes of the city include Upper Vaitarna, Middle Vaitarna, Modak Sagar, Tansa, Bhatsa, Vihar and Tulsi. Of these, Modak Sagar has the highest supply of the seven, with 25% stock, according to a BMC report. Meanwhile, Upper Vaitarna has no useful water anymore, while Tansa has 11.37%, Middle Vaitarna 14.23%, Bhatsa 9.72%, Vihar 22.27% and Tulsi has 30.64% of the stock.
Civic officials said there was no decision taken yet to reduce water supply in the country’s commercial capital.
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