Deficit water stock cause of concern

Even as the city will continue to receive abundant rainfall in the next few days, the lack of this abundance in the catchment areas so far has become a cause of concern.

Only a week ago, the city was proclaimed monsoon deficient as per the Long Period Average (LPA). However, weather experts have confirmed that Mumbai, by the end of this month, will receive its average June rainfall of 503mm. Such is not the condition of its seven lakes which supply water to the city, with all of them close to their lowest drawable limits (LDL) owing to low rainfall in these areas.

Compared to the 3,32,647 ML water supply the lakes were holding this time last year, all the seven lakes merely hold 30 per cent of it at 96,665 ML currently.

The most deficient are the Middle Vaitarna and Upper Vaitarna, which by this time had received 542mm and 615mm rainfall last year, but have received only 60.5mm and 49mm rainfall in 2016, respectively.

All the other catchment areas are facing similar crisis with the rainfall being about 20 per cent of the 2015 average.

Data provided by BMC officials has pointed out that the rise in the levels of the lakes due to rainfall has been negligible, bringing them closer to their respective LDLs.

“About 17,051ml of Upper Vaitarna carryover content was consumed by evaporation and release in current year,” said a civic official who did not wish to be named.

As the state government’s cloud seeding programme is yet to be launched, the catchment areas are dependent on the southwest monsoon for the rejuvenation of their supply to provide enough water for the rest of the year to Mumbaikars.

In May, the state government had confirmed that the cloud seeding programme would be conducted in the catchment areas of the state to ensure that the rain shadow zones receive enough rainfall during the season. However, officials have remained mum on the timeline of the programme. Meanwhile, weather experts from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said that the twin weather systems over Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal, resulting in heavy rainfall in the city would continue for 24 hours from June 30.

The city is slated to receive heavy to very heavy rainfall till June end. With the lowest temperature in the city touching 24 degree Celsius, both Colaba and Santa Cruz weather stations have reported 25mm and 14mm rainfall, respectively, in the last 24 hours.

The disaster management cell of BMC confirmed that water-logging was reported by he residents at 12 areas in the city, including five each in Mumbai city and eastern suburbs and two in western suburbs. At the same time, a total of 30 trees had collapsed around the city between 8 am and 6 pm on June 26.