Mumbai’s seven lakes gain over a month’s water supply in single day after heavy rainfall | Mumbai News

MUMBAI: Continuous rainfall over the past few days has sharply improved Mumbai’s water reserves, with the seven lakes supplying the city witnessing a dramatic rise in storage from less than 10% on July 4 to 41.36% on Wednesday. Tulsi Lake also became the second lake to overflow this monsoon, spilling over at 11.43 pm on Tuesday.The total water stock in the seven reservoirs stood at 5.98 lakh million litres (41.36%) on Wednesday, up from 4.18 lakh million litres (28.92%) on Tuesday—a 12.44 percentage point jump in just 24 hours.Since every 1% of water storage is sufficient to meet Mumbai’s needs for nearly three days, the single-day increase is equivalent to more than a month’s water supply.However, despite the rapid improvement, civic officials said there is no immediate plan to withdraw the 10% water cut currently in force, as the lakes need to reach a combined storage of 14.47 lakh million litres by the end of September to comfortably meet the city’s annual demand.On the same date last year, the seven lakes held 10.30 lakh million litres (71.13%), while on July 8, 2024, storage stood at 2.71 lakh million litres (18.73%).Tulsi Lake, one of Mumbai’s smallest reservoirs located inside Sanjay Gandhi National Park, began overflowing late Tuesday night. Built in 1879, the lake has a live storage capacity of 8,046 million litres and supplies around 18 million litres of water daily. Overflow from Tulsi flows into Vihar Lake, which also began overflowing on Tuesday evening at 9 pm. Mumbai’s daily water demand is about 4,100 million litres (MLD).

Water storage over the past week

Water stock on the same date