Mumbai: Lakes level rises beyond 97% after overnight rains

Mumbai: Following overnight heavy rains, the collective level of seven lakes increased to 97.49% on Saturday. These water bodies, instrumental in supporting the city life, now have 14,11,066 million litres (ML) of useful water content against their total capacity of 14,47,363 ML.

This stock will be sufficient for Mumbai for more than 360 days. With this, the city is now short of only 36,297 ML of water stock to get an uninterrupted water supply throughout the year.

On the same day in October 2021, the lakes were 99.20% full and had 14,35,717 ML useful water content. Similarly in 2020, the lakes were 98.21% full, with 14,21,526 ML useful water content.

Among the seven lakes, Tulsi and Vihar are 100% full. With a capacity of 27,698 ML, Vihar started overflowing on August 11 whereas Tulsi was filled to the brim up to 8,046 ML on July 16. Modak Sagar lake has replenished its stock up to 1,12,581 ML against total capacity of 1,28,925 ML.

Tansa holds 14,14,16 ML useful water content, which is 97.47% of its stock. Bhatsa is 99.23% full and has 71,15,50 ML of useful water content, out of which, 5,75,700 ML is supplied to Mumbai while the rest is used by the state irrigation department.

As a precautionary measure, two gates of Bhatsa are open since October 2. Middle Vaitarna has capacity of 19,35,30 ML and currently holds 18,46,57 ML usable water. One of its gates has been kept open since October 3.

The BMC daily supplies 3,850 ML water to the city while the actual requirement is almost 4,400 ML.