5-stars hotels, malls face 50% water supply cut, swimming pools stare at ‘dry’ days

“The lake levels are slowly rising, so we have decided we will not impose a further cut for residents. We have decided instead to reduce the supply to hotels and malls by half. Even for construction sites, we will continue supply of drinking water for use by labourers, but there will be no supply to swimming pools or gardens till further notice,” additional municipal commissioner Mohan Adtani said at the civic standing committee meeting Wednesday.

According to BMC data, the collective levels of the six lakes, Modak Sagar, Tansa, Vehar, Tulsi, Bhatsa, and Upper Vaitarna, have risen minimally during the last week to cross the one million litre mark, now standing at 1,11,193 million litres. However, records show the stores are at their lowest in four years.

The usable content level of Upper Vaitarna lake, despite receiving over 240 mm of rainfall since the start of the season this year, remains
at “zero”. The corporation is currently drawing water from the lake’s reserve stores.

The Bhatsa lake, which accounts for over 50 per cent of Mumbai’s water supply, currently holds 29,201 million litres of useful water content. In 2012, when Mumbai faced a 30 per cent water cut around this time of the year on account of a shortage of rainfall in the catchment areas, the levels of this lake stood at 1.1 lakh million litres.

The Modak Sagar lake, which together with Upper Vaitarna has 59,505 million litres of useful content in its stores, is significantly lower than the amount in its stores in 2013. At this time last year, the lake level had 1.23 million litres of useful water content.

Meanwhile, the recently commissioned Middle Vaitarna dam still has a useful water content of “zero”.
mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com