Water cut likely to continue entire year, review meet on Oct 15

The 10 per cent water cut imposed by the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is likely to continue the entire year. At the final review meeting on October 15, the irrigation department will decide about water cut for irrigation and will also ask the PMC to continue with the present water cut, said officials.

"This should be a long-term measure and only if we continue with water cuts will we have water to last till July 15 next year,'' said irrigation officials, ahead of the review meeting. With catchment areas not receiving much rainfall in September and the withdrawal of monsoon to start from September 22, irrigation officials said this year the situation has been grim.

With no water in the three dams in the first week of June, the irrigation department had been readying short-term and long-term measures. The department managed to salvage the situation after instructing the Corporation to introduce water cut and restrict water supply for irrigation, said an official. "The dam level improved almost at the end of July when rain started in catchment areas. However as a precautionary measure, we should start with the preparations ahead,'' said the irrigation official.

Municipal Commissioner Mahesh Pathak had declared that they would take the final decision on water cuts in the last week of September. The civic administration was to decide whether to retain the water cut or supply water twice a day. He had declared that they would continue with water cuts as they would have to be prepared till next monsoon.

Since march this year, the city has been getting water just once a day. Initially, it was a 20 per cent water cut which was reduced to 10 per cent in August after the dams received catchment water. On Thursday, the collective storage of the four dams was 27.45 TMC which was 94 per cent.

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