Mumbai: Lake levels see slight improvement, city awaits heavy rainfall

Tansa lake in Thane. File pic

For the first time in a while, lake levels have gradually started to show an upward trend. Even though there isn't much rain in the lakes outside the Mumbai limit, there is a rise of 1,000 million litres of water in combined stock. The city needs around 4,500 million litres of water every day.

Despite the city starting to receive good rain in the past two days, the lakes outside the city limits have received less than an average of 20 mm of rain (measured in the 24 hours up to 6 am on Friday). The total capacity of these lakes is 14.47 lakh million litres, with the water stock at 76,584 million litres as of Thursday, June 27. By Friday, the stock had increased slightly to 77,421 million litres, which is less than a 1,000 million litres increase - barely one-fourth of the city's daily requirement. Meanwhile, the BMC has drawn 72,780 million litres of water from the reserve stock of Upper Vaitarna and Bhatsa.

Seven lakes supply water to the city. Two of them, Tulsi and Vihar, are in the city limits, while five are on the border of Thane and Nashik. Tulsi received 98 mm of rainfall, while Vihar received 86 mm of rainfall in 24 hours. Both lakes received more than 400 mm of rainfall in June, but as they are very small, there isn't much growth in the lakes' stock.

Water stock on June 28 compared to the past two years

2024: 77,421-5.35 per cent
2023: 1,05,109 - 7.26 per cent
2022: 1,30,871-9.04 per cent