The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Six tmcft of water release to Chennai assured

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 09, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Six tmcft of water release to Chennai assured

K. Lakshmi

CHENNAI: About six thousand million cubic feet of water (tmcft) will be released to Chennai in two months under the Telugu Ganga project, Andhra Pradesh Major Irrigation Minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah said at the inter-State border in Uthukottai on Wednesday. This would mean eight months of daily water supply to the city at the present supply rate of 645 million litres a day.

Participating in the ceremony to mark the water arrival from Kandaleru reservoir, he told The Hindu that the water release to Tamil Nadu would be feasible thanks to the comfortable storage in the Srisailam and Somasila reservoirs up stream Kandaleru.

At least one tcmft of water would be released in 11 days, he added.

With the discharge from the Kandaleru reservoir stepped up to nearly 1,000 cubic feet of water per second (cusecs) on Wednesday, about 280 cusecs of water flowed into the canal at Tamil Nadu limit.

Recalling that he was participating in such functions for the fourth consecutive time, Mr. Lakshmaiah said that about 29 tmcft of water had been released to Tamil Nadu in the past 12 years. However, he charged that Maharashtra and Karnataka violated the inter-State agreement on sharing of Krishna water and sought co-operation from other States.

Saying that the repair works in the Kandaleru-Poondi canal would be completed by 2008, the Minister urged the Tamil Nadu Government to participate in its maintenance and share the project cost.

Meanwhile, the repair work of shutters is in progress at the Poondi reservoir to shore up the storage level.

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