Powai lake overflows after heavy rain in Mumbai; overall water stock in lakes shows marginal improvement

Indian Express

18-06-2025

Mumbai's Powai lake, an artificial water body that supplies non-potable water to the city, started overflowing Wednesday morning after its level reached its maximum capacity following heavy rain.
Meanwhile, the average stock in all seven lakes that supply potable water to Mumbai also saw a rise as the overall stock stood at 10.19 per cent Wednesday morning — a marginal improvement in the last 24 hours.
According to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) authorities, the Powai lake overflowed at around 6 am on Wednesday.
'The lake has reached its full capacity and started overflowing due to heavy rainfall in its catchment area over the past two days. As of now, the water level stands at 195.10 feet. With a storage capacity of 545 crore litres, the lake's water is non-potable, and is primarily used for industrial and non-potable needs,' a civic body official said.
According to the India Meteorological Data (IMD), Mumbai's Santacruze observatory recorded 29 mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours, and the coastal observatory at Colaba recorded 7 mm.
BMC said Mumbai's western suburbs recorded 92 mm of rainfall, followed by 84 mm in the eastern suburbs, and 63 mm in the island city during the last 24 hours.
According to the civic body's data from Wednesday morning, the average water stock stood at 10.19 per cent, which is 1.47 lakh million litre against the overall capacity of 14.47 lakh million litre of all the seven lakes.
On Tuesday, the water stock in the lakes stood at 9.78 per cent.
An island city, Mumbai draws its potable water from the Tulsi, Vihar, Bhatsa, Tansa, Upper Vaitarna, Middle Vaitarna, and Modak Sagar lakes.
While two of these lakes are within Mumbai, the rest are in the neighbouring districts of Thane, Palghar, and Nashik.
The catchment area of these lakes gets filled during the monsoon, and the water is transported through tunnels to BMC's filtration plant.
After filtration, water is supplied to every household and commercial establishment through pipelines and reservoirs.
BMC's data also shows that on June 18 last year, the city's water stock stood at 5.35 per cent, and on the same date in 2023, the stock stood at 8.23 per cent.
Civic officials said all seven lakes would reach their 100 per cent capacity by August end or the first week of September.
As BMC supplies around 3,850 million litre daily (MLD) of water, the present stock is likely to last for the next 30 days, and the overall stock for around 375 days.
However, owing to incidents of leakage and pipeline bursts, a significant quantity of water gets wasted every year.
'Considering the onset of monsoon has happened early, the rate of evaporation has gone down since the maximum temperature levels have shown a decline. Therefore, the water stock is adequate to last till July 31. We have a good rainfall forecast this year, as a result of which no water cut has been proposed, and over the last two days, the catchment areas in Mumbai are also witnessing good rainfall,' said a civic official.
The BMC's data also shows that in the last 24 hours only the catchment areas of the Tansa and Bhatsa lakes received a good amount of rainfall at 35 and 27 mm daily, followed by 24 mm in the Tulsi lake, 21 mm in the Upper Vaitarna, 17 mm in the Middle Vaitarna, 12 mm in the Modak Sagar, and 2 mm in the Vihar lake.