Catchment areas continue to receive subnormal rainfall

While the city witnessed heavy downpour on Wednesday, the situation across its catchment areas was not as encouraging, with water stock plunging on Thursday.

As reported earlier, the BMC has announced a 20% cut in the duration it supplies water to residents, since Thursday.

On Wednesday, the city received a little over 180mm of rain in BMC-administered areas. During the 24-hour period beginning at 6 am on Wednesday, Tulsi and Vihar dams received rainfall of 183.9mm. On the other hand, the situation across other big lakes like Modak Sagar, Tansa, Upper Vaitarna and Bhatsa, was grave. The four reservoirs received an average of 6.35mm showers.

"The rainfall was not encouraging in Mumbai's catchment areas. Hence, the total useful content available across dams plunged from 1,11,646 million litres to 1,09,241 million litres, a drop of 2,405 million litres.

On July 3 last year, the total stock available was 4,51,795 million litres," a senior civic official said, wishing anonymity.

However, the official reiterated that the civic authorities were hopeful of an increase in useful content due to the showers. "Normally, we receive 35% quota of the total annual water requirement, each in July and August. We still have three months in hand and the situation is likely to improve," he added.

Mumbai's total annual water requirement is 13.50 million litres.

Lake
Maximum withdraw-able level (in metres)
Least withdraw-able level (in metres)
Present level (in metres)

Modak Sagar
163.15
143.26
153.81

Tansa
128.63
118.87
120.00

Vihar
80.12
73.92
74.01

Tulsi
139.17
131.07
134.46

Upper Vaitarna
603.51
595.44
594.21

Bhatsa
142.07
104.90
107.68