The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Krishna water to flow only for `a few more days'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 22, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Krishna water to flow only for `a few more days'

By T. Ramakrishnan

CHENNAI, FEB. 21. The inflow of Krishna water into Tamil Nadu is dwindling and water managers say that the flow will continue only for "a few more days."

There has been no firm response from the Andhra Pradesh irrigation authorities to Tamil Nadu's request for increasing the flow. With the water level at Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra Pradesh declining, it is a matter of time before the Krishna water supply stops, the managers say.

Inflow levels

This morning, an inflow of 95 cubic feet per second (cusecs) was recorded at the Zero Point on the Tamil Nadu-Andhra Pradesh border, about 85 km from Chennai. About 10 days ago, it was about 200 cusecs and last week, it came down to around 150 cusecs.

The storage of the Kandaleru reservoir, the terminal storage point in Andhra Pradesh under the Krishna water supply system, was about 6.8 tmcft (thousand million cubic feet). Water can be released till the storage reaches 6.5 tmcft.

On Monday, the combined storage of Red Hills, Cholavaram and Satyamurthi Sagar at Poondi stood at 2.487 tmcft. (Two years ago, on March 1, 2003, the combined storage was 2.164 tmcft).

Chembarampakkam, also used for supplementing the city supply, now has a storage of 0.3 tmcft.

Supply scenario

Though Metrowater has been supplying water to the public on alternate days, it has calculated its existing requirement as 300 million litres a day (MLD) including the supply of 50 MLD for industry and 10 MLD for bulk consumers and adjoining local bodies.

At present, the water agency is getting water from the Veeranam tank to provide 180 MLD. The storage of about 1 tmcft at Veeranam is expected to last two more months, only after which Metrowater will start drawing more quantum from the city reservoirs.

According to conservative estimates, 12 million cubic feet of water will be required a day to sustain the present supply.

After giving allowance for evaporation, the existing storage of 2.5 tmcft may last three more months, provided it is fully used for the city supply.

As Metrowater will make use of groundwater also, it hopes that the situation can be managed till September or the onset of the north-east monsoon. Even now, about 80-90 MLD is drawn from numerous deep borewells on the north-western fringes of the city.

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