TAMBARAM: The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board has commenced a survey in Tambaram Municipality for preparing a long-term plan to tackle its water supply problems, and to put in place a new scheme taking into consideration the needs of local residents 30 years from now.

The Municipality has agreed to pay Rs. 5 lakh to Metrowater as a token amount for conducting the survey.

Metrowater is likely to complete the survey and submit its report in three months, officials said.

First scheme

The civic body first designed its own water scheme from the Palar at Villiambakkam in the late 1960s.

At present, it receives around 27 lakh litres a day from Villiambakkam and it is supplied to East Tambaram residents.

It supplies 16 lakh litres from the Alandur-Pallavaram Combined Water Supply Scheme to West Tambaram.

And the daily quantity of about 45 lakh litres it receives from the two schemes is hardly enough for the 1.35 lakh residents .

Based on the norm that the residents of municipalities were eligible for 90 litres per head a day, the local body ought to receive nothing less than 120 lakh litres a day.

A. Janakiraman, Municipal Chairman (in charge), said that at a recent meeting at the Kancheepuram Collectorate, they appealed to Local Administration Minister M.K. Stalin to look into the water supply problems in Tambaram.

Mr. Stalin was apprised of the problems: leakage along the main supply lines from Villiambakkam; water supply only once in a week or once in 10 days; and non-supply of water in some areas.

Following this, Metrowater was asked to conduct the survey and prepare the scheme.

Mr. Janakiraman said the survey's thrust would be to identify places deprived of water supply and to locate new sources of water either from the Palar or elsewhere.

At present, the Municipality had overhead tanks and sumps to store 28 lakh litres and works were under way in increasing the storage capacity to about 50 lakh litres.

The works were likely to be completed in a few months.

Storage capacity

Of the 24,000-odd households, only about 7,000 had individual water connections and the State Government had permitted the local body to provide another 6,000 connections.

With the increase in the storage capacity, the civic body would be able to provide water directly to more than 13,000 houses, the Chairman said.

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