The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Monsoon onset raises city's hopes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 20, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Monsoon onset raises city's hopes

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, OCT. 19. The timely onset of the northeast monsoon has generated hopes among Chennai's water authorities of tiding over the acute crisis.

During a `normal' monsoon, the city's reservoirs — Red Hills, Cholavaram and Satyamurthi Sagar at Poondi — receive at least three thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water. The monsoon accounts for about 60 per cent of the reservoirs' annual normal rainfall, going by the 30-year-long rainfall average (1971-2000). The reservoirs receive 125 cm rainfall annually, of which 71 cm occurs during October-December.

So far, rainfall this year has been better than 2003.

During October-December of 2003, the three storage points received a mere 38 cm, whereas in 19 days of this month, they recorded 10 cm. As this is only the early phase of the monsoon, the water authorities expect that the reservoirs will receive more rain. Their optimism is backed by the forecast of professional meteorologists that the 2004 northeast monsoon is likely to be ``normal or above normal.'' As on date, only the Poondi reservoir has some water and its storage is about 20 million cubic feet (mcft) against the capacity of 7,412 mcft. However, the authorities expect that the other two storage points will start receiving inflows if the rains continue for a few more days.

Apart from the city reservoirs, the authorities can bank on supply from the Veeranam lake. As on date, the storage in the lake is 905 mcft against the capacity of 1,456 mcft. The lake recorded an inflow of 900 cubic feet per second (cusecs) while the discharge was about 375 cusecs, which included 75 cusecs for Chennai. As the Veeranam tank normally receives heavy inflow from its local catchment during this season, there is every chance of the tank overflowing this year.

In addition to the city reservoirs and Veeranam lake, the city authorities have been promised that Krishna water will arrive by the middle of November.

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