Urban News

Despite heavy showers between June 10 and June 20, the catchment areas faced a dry spell of sorts with minor drizzles. The hydraulic engineering department has termed rainfall over the past seven days as ‘not satisfactory’. With falling lake levels, it has warned citizens to continue using water judiciously.

“For soil in catchment areas to get saturated with water, continuous, heavy rainfall for a couple of weeks is required. Frequent dry spells are drying up land because of which lake levels are not rising,” said hydraulic engineer Vinay Deshpande. He added that despite an early monsoon, the quantum has not been that encouraging.

Major lakes — Upper Vaitarna, Modak Sagar and Tansa located in the Thane district— which had earlier shown marginal rise are now showing decrease in levels again. The state-government owned Bhatsa dam is the only major lake that has reported a 0.15 metre rise in levels due to 507.20 mm of total rainfall in its catchment areas so far.

The levels in Modaksagar and Tansa decreased by 0.16 metres and 0.03 metres respectively while, Upper Vaitarna’s level has remained constant. Despite heavy rainfall in the city, lakes Vihar and Tulsi have also failed to show increased levels.

With close to 890 mm of rainfall in the city so far, Tulsi has show zero rise in level while Vihar has witnessed a marginal rise of 0.03 metres. 

With the discouraging rainfall scenario in the the catchment areas, rolling back water cut is not on BMC’s agenda. “We were earlier contemplating partial lifting of the cut but the rains have yet again evaded us and to be on the safer side, the cuts will continue,” said an official requesting anonymity.

Despite a demand of 4,250 million litres per day, the BMC supplies 3,450 mld of water. However, owing to poor rainfall last year, the BMC has been supplying 2,900 mld per day since October last year.