Except for Vihar Lake, all other lakes are way behind average.
This year’s monsoon is already a month old and it’s time to take stock.
It’s good news for residential areas in the city, which have witnessed the highest June rainfall in the past decade. However, in catchment areas - belts that need water the most - the rains have not been quiet up to the mark.
Even though the catchment areas have received more rainfall than what it had at this point in time last year, overall the rains in five of the six catchments has been far below the average rainfall recorded in June during the past few monsoons.
Only Vihar Lake, which has its catchment located inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, has seen above average rains, according to information compiled by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC) hydraulic department.
The department used rainfall data from catchments collected from 2005 to 2008 to calculate the average rainfall over them in recent years.
According to a senior department official, rainfall witnessed in 2005, a surplus year, and 2008, a deficient year, were excluded for obvious reasons.
Vihar has so far received 947.80 mm of rainfall, which is 25% above the three-year (2005-2008) average of 754.50 mm.
Rains have, however, not been generous over other catchments.
The rainfall recorded so far in the Modak Sagar catchment - 274.80 mm - is nearly 45% below the three-year average. Upper Vaitarna belt has similarly seen 45% below average rains.
The rainfall recorded in the Tansa catchment was 38% below average and Bhatsa, which along with Upper Vaitarna, accounts for a lion share of city’s water supply, is 16% below the average.
According to senior officials, even though rains have led to a rise in water levels, even these levels were 25% below those seen during the three years.
In fact, even in 2009, the reservoirs, at this point, had more water available than this year, added the official. The reservoirs are collectively holding 1.20 lakh million litre of water. At this time last year, the corresponding figure was 1.62 million litre.
Another department official, however, said that things were looking up with the meteorological department forecasting a normal monsoon.
“The department was hoping for more rains over the catchments in June,” the official said. He described the present catchment scene as “not very pleasing, but not worrying”. But, there is no immediate proposal to pull back the city’s water cuts. The hydraulic department is hoping that rains consolidate further in July. So far, the Colaba observatory has seen 947 mm rainfall, while the Santa Cruz observatory has witnessed 712 mm of rains.
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