Vihar Lake overflows: 3 out of 7 lakes supplying water to Mumbai at full capacity
Vihar Lake started overflowing on Monday morning (Representational Image)
The continuous spell of heavy rainfall has led Vihar Lake, among the seven lakes that supply water to Mumbai, to start overflowing from Monday morning. According to civic officials, the lake started overflowing from around 10 am today.
Vihar Lake is the third lake that started overflowing this monsoon, thanks to the incessant rainfall the city received over the last few days. At present, the lakes together have enough water stock to last 215 days.
Prior to this, Tulsi Lake had started overflowing on July 9 and Modak Sagar followed suit on July 15. Even Tansa Lake is near the brim and expected to start overflowing soon.
Mumbai’s water supply comes from seven lakes – Modak Sagar, Tansa, Vihar, Tulsi, Upper Vaitarna, Bhatsa and Middle Vaitarna. While five of them are maintained by the BMC, two (Bhatsa & Upper Vaitarna) come under the state government’s control.
Since the city received more rainfall than catchment areas, Tulsi and Vihar Lakes – which are situated within city limits at Sanjay Gandhi National Park – were the first ones to reach maximum capacity.
The seven lakes supply approximately 3,750 million litres of water to the city every day. They need to have 14.47 lakh million litres of water stock by end of monsoon to avoid water cuts.
Prior to 2016, the civic body was forced to impose water cuts throughout the city due to insufficient rainfall. The situation, however, improved in the last two years, as a result of which the BMC lifted the cuts.
Meanwhile, IMD has forecast heavy to very heavy rains in parts of Mumbai, Thane, and Palghar till July 17. Mumbai also saw the season’s highest tide of 4.97 m on Sunday.
