Water levels in Mumbai reservoirs reach 90%; city's main lakes overflow causing alarm

Mumbai: After heavy and long spells of rain in Mumbai and adjoining areas, four of the seven reservoirs, which supply water to the city are overflowing, bringing relief to citizens and civic authorities. “We are happy to say that sufficient rains have filled up our reservoirs up to 90 percent, as four out of seven reservoirs, from which we supply water to the metropolis, have started overflowing,” Ashok Tawadia, Chief Hydrolic Engineer of BMC told PTI. He said Tulsi Lake, Vehar Lake, the Modak Sagar and Tansa lakes have started overflowing. Out of the total requirement of 14.50 million litres for the entire year, we have reserved 13.13 million litres of water in seven reservoirs up to 6 am on Wednesday, he said. [caption id=“attachment_2719082” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. IBNLive[/caption] Tawadia also hoped that more rainfall in the coming days would eliminate water woes in the city due following the consecutive droughts in Maharashtra. According to the daily lake level report released by the civic body on Tuesday, Vehar started overflowing at 4.20 am on 1 August, Modak Sagar started overflowing at 10.28 pm on Monday night and Tansa started overflowing at 2.14 AM on Tuesday. Upper Vaitarna, Middle Vaitarna and Bhatsa are the three catchment areas that still need to be filled, out of which Bhatsa reservoir is the largest water supplying dam, Tawadia said. Meanwhile, the civic body has alerted local administration in surrounding areas to be careful as overflow may cause flash floods. “This is our routine procedure that we alert the local administration to be careful as we open dam gates after it starts overflowing and it may cause floods in surrounding areas,” said Tawadia. Mumbai’s water supply comes from seven reservoirs which store rainwater. These are: Modak Sagar (built in 1957), Tansa lake (built in 1925), Vehar lake (built in 1860), Tulsi lake (built in 1879), Upper Vaitarna (built in 1973), Bhatsa (built in 1983) and Middle Vaitarna (built in 2012). Bhatsa and Upper Vaitarna come under Maharashtra government’s control while the rest are managed and maintained by the MCGM. The civic body supplies 3,750 million litres of water everyday to the island city and suburbs, which falls short of the actual demand for 4,200 million litres. In recent past, insufficient rainfall was forcing BMC to cut the water supply at times. Recently, it had revoked 20 percent cut in the water supply to the megapolis, which was imposed in August last year.