Bountiful rainfall on Saturday has given the city cause for cheer.
Bountiful rainfall on Saturday has given the city cause for cheer.
The area around the seven lakes supplying water to the city received over 890mm of rainfall in 24 hours on Saturday, as opposed to merely 490mm of rainfall received on Friday. This has allayed concerns of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) over the continuously depleting lake water levels owing to poor rainfall in catchment areas.
Saturday’s rainfall has led to an increase of a total of 38,201 million litres (Ml) of water in the seven lakes.
Even though this water added to the lake levels on Saturday will suffice the city for little over a day’s supply, BMC officials hope the situation continues for the remainder of monsoon.
As of 6 am on Sunday, Mumbai’s catchment area received a total of 4,451mm of rainfall from this monsoon, compared to 4,895mm of rainfall received by this time last year. This has translated into 1,57,460 Ml of useful water content, which is less than half the water available for use this time last year (3,29,855 Ml).
However, until early Saturday morning, the catchment area had received a total of only 3,561mm of rainfall, in comparison to 4,890mm received the same time last year. A civic official from the hydraulics department said, “Until Friday afternoon, the amount of rainfall received by the catchment area was negligible, and the situation was worrisome. However, the rainfall received in the past 24 hours has improved the situation and we hope this condition will continue.”
As of now, Mumbai continues to use water reserves from the Upper Vaitarna system. Upper Vaitarna also loses about 25,736 Ml of water to evaporation. However, the Bhatsa system now has useful water content to suffice the city for about 30 days, without using water reserves.
The Vihar lake, which is within Mumbai, has received the highest rainfall so far (1372mm), which has translated into 10368 Ml of useful water content.
The Tulsi lake has received 1,318mm of rainfall this year, which has translated into 5934 Ml of useful water content for the city.
