The rainfall in catchment areas of lakes supplying water to Mumbai has led to a rise of around 1% in their total water stock. However, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has said sustained rainfall will be required in the lakes for the rise to be considerable.
The Hindu had reported last week that after Upper Vaitarna, Bhatsa lake had also hit zero stock and that the total water stock of the city stood at 4.95%, the lowest in three years.
But, the heavy rainfall in the catchment areas since Friday has led to an increase of 1.1% in total stock.
On Sunday, the city’s water stock stood at 87,648 million litres or 6.06% as against 71,574 million litres on June 27. However, this is still the lowest stock in three years. On the same day last year, the stock stood at 20.33%. The city requires a total stock of 14.47 lakh million litres to last the year.
The rise can be attributed to moderate to heavy rainfall in catchment of all seven lakes, particularly the smaller ones. In last 24 hours, they have all shown a rise of less than one metre in water level. Therefore, while Upper Vaitarna still stands at zero, Bhatsa has improved slightly to reach 0.43% or 0.89 meters above lowest drawable level.
So far, the five bigger lakes have received less than 500 mm rainfall this monsoon while Tulsi and Vihar have seen a significant rise.
“We are optimistic. Even though this is a minor rise, we are hoping as monsoon progresses, all seven lakes will be completely filled so that we have enough water stock to last till next year,” said a senior officer from BMC’s hydraulic engineer’s department.
Meanwhile, the city received 9.2 mm rainfall on Sunday, lower than the previous two days. India Meteorological Department’s Santacruz observatory recorded 9.2 mm rainfall while 15.8 mm was recorded in Colaba. Thus, the total rainfall received by the city in the month of June stands at 524 mm, higher than the June average by around 20 mm.
Region wise, island city received 20.16 mm, western suburbs 9.72 mm and eastern suburbs 19.86 mm of rainfall on Sunday. IMD has forecast intermittent rain in the city and suburbs on Monday and Tuesday. The BMC received four complaints of short circuits in the city and 39 complaints of trees falling.
Akshay Deoras, a meteorologist and PhD researcher at the University of Reading, U.K., who has been tracking Indian monsoon said, “Even though Mumbai has surpassed June’s average rainfall, most of it was received in a short span of two days. There will have to be many events like Friday’s to make up for the lost time but there is no forecast for such heavy rainfall for July. In 2009 and 2014, there was a similar situation in June, which led to an overall season deficit. It is a race against time now.”
