Mumbai: Municipal body taps into reserve stock in dams

The BMC has also started fetching reserved water from Bhatsa. File pic/Sayyed Sameer Abedi

With the depleting levels in the reservoirs supplying water to Mumbai, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has started tapping into the reserved stock from Upper Vaitarna and Bhatsa. Till now, the BMC has used 25,084 million litres of water below from the reserved stock of 91,130 million litres of Upper Vaitarna. The BMC has also started fetching reserved water from Bhatsa from Wednesday.

The monsoon has taken a break after officially entering the city on June 9. Hardly any rain has been recorded in the region of reservoirs that are located in and around Mumbai. The BMC announced a 10 per cent water cut from June 5 and has now started fetching water from reserved stock as water level of Bhatsa and Upper Vaitarna touched zero mark on the lowest limits to draw water.

Currently the regular stock is merely 5.51 per cent of its capacity. Out of the total stock of 14,47,363 million litres of water, all seven dams have a total of 79,711 million litres of water on Thursday morning. Last year on this day, the lakes had 9.45 per cent of stock.

The Maharashtra government had given permission to the civic body to use 1,37,000 million litres of additional water from Bhatsa dam and 91,130 million litres from Upper Vaitarna dam in addition to the current stock. The BMC used 3,749 million litres from Bhatsa and 25,084 million litres of water from Upper Vaitarna which is more than one fourth of the stock. Even if the rain arrives, it will take at least a week to improve the water table at lakes. The civic body won't be relaxing the water cuts until the water level in reservoirs improves significantly.