MUMBAI: For the the first time this monsoon season, the water stock in the seven lakes that cater to the city touched 29.7% on Sunday morning, matching last year's level on July 14. Though the lake levels rose by 4.7% from 25% on Saturday morning, civic officials said that the 10% cut in water supply to the city will remain for now.
"The rains may have helped improve the quantum of water stock, but...there has to be continuous and progressive rainfall and the total stock in the lakes need to come close to 100%, only then we can think of withdrawing the cut," said a BMC official.
The seven lakes need to have total stock of 14.47 lakh million litres of water.
According to BMC data, on Sunday, the total water stock stood at 4.3 lakh million litres or 29.7% of the total required quantum. Though the total water stock was equivalent to the quantum recorded on July 14, 2023, it was much lower as compared to the same day in 2022 - about 9.5 lakh million litres or 65.8% of the total required quantum.
Bhatsa, one of the biggest lakes supplying potable water to Mumbai, has 28.7% useful water content this year so far, while Vihar and Tulsi, which are the smaller lakes, have 52.1% and 91.4% water stock, respectively. Upper Vaitarna has only 1.9% water stock, Modak Sagar has 45.7%, Tansa has 60.9% and Middle Vaitarna has 27.1%. Officials said BMC has stopped drawing additional water from the reserve stock - 1.4 lakh million litres from Bhatsa and 91,130 million litres from Upper Vaitarna .
Of the seven lakes, the maximum percentage of potable water is supplied to Mumbai by Bhatsa (48%). Tulsi and Vihar provide for around 2% of the city's drinking water needs, Upper Vaitarna 16%, Middle Vaitarna 12%, Modak Sagar 11%, and Tansa 10%.