By Apurva Bhatt

 

 

The BMC is preparing for the worst if it doesn’t rain soon. The richest civic body is currently preparing to carry out cloud-seeding in the event of poor monsoon, as half of the month of June has gone by, with very little rainfall.

 

latest statistics from the BMC water supply department show that the six lakes supplying water to Mumbai have barely enough to last two months.Collectively, the useful water content of the six lakes — Modak Sagar, Upper Vaitarna, Tansa, Vihar, Tulsi and Bhatsa — stands at 1.45 lakh million litres of water. Daily, the civic body supplies around 3,300 million litres of water to the island city and suburbs of Mumbai, which is still short of the demand for 4,200 million litres of water.

 

The level of Bhatsa lake, which accounts for 59 per cent of Mumbai’s water supply, currently stands at 113.1 metres which is dipping closer to its lower limit of 104.90 meters. Of this, the usable content is 1.1 lakh million litres. During the monsoon season, it should reach its maximum limit of 142.07 metres to ensure sufficient water supply to the city for the rest of the year.A senior civic official of the water supply department said, “The lake levels can assure water supply till July 31.  But we do not want to wait till that date, and hence we are preparing for cloud seeding, and even water cuts may come in.”

 

The official said the corporation was in the process of issuing tenders for cloud-seeding, in anticipation of insufficient rainfall. Cloud-seeding is a process of aerially injecting hydroscopic material into rain clouds to induce rainfall. The technology, if used,  is, however, expected to dent the civic body’s budget by about Rs 15-20 crore.

 

Based on a global warning about the El Nino effect that refers to the warming of surface waters of oceans, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted less a than normal rainfall this monsoon. “We are hoping that the rains will pick up by mid-July and August and we will not have to depend on cloud-seeding,” said the senior official. While the levels of Tulsi, Vihar and Tansa lakes which account for nearly 10 per cent of the city’s water supply are at 134.72, 74.73, and 121.38 meters respectively, the usable water content in all three lakes is collectively about 35,000 million litres which is much lesser than their position recorded in 2013.

 

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