The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Comfortable water supply in store, say officials

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Thursday, Jan 29, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Comfortable water supply in store, say officials

K. Lakshmi

Residents of some areas don’t set great store by this hopeful situation

— Photo: S. R. Raghunathan

HOPE-LIT HORIZON: Thanks to the Krishna water, the Poondi reservoir will soon fill up and meet the summer demand.

CHENNAI: With the city receiving Krishna water for over 10 days now, the storage position in the four reservoirs has become comfortable enough to sustain the daily water supply till October-end.

Availability of enough water in the reservoirs, however, seems to have made little difference to residents of some areas in the city who continue to complain about dwindling water supply.

Officials of the Water Resources Department said that about 170 million cubic feet (mcft) of Krishna water has been realised at Uthukottai, the inter-State border of the Kandaleru-Poondi canal since its release around this Pongal.

Chennai’s need

Chennai has to be provided about 4,000 mcft of water between January and March as per the agreement on Krishna water-sharing between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. About 36,000 mcft of the water has been received by the city since 1996, the officials said.

An official said: “We have sought water release from the Kandaleru reservoir to build up storage in city reservoirs to tackle the demand during summer.”

A Chennai Metrowater official said that the total storage capacity of the four reservoirs stood at 9,039 mcft as against their cumulative capacity of 11,057 mcft. With the available resources, daily water supply of 650 million litres a day (mld) could be sustained till the northeast monsoon this year.

The water release from the Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra Pradesh has helped balance the decreasing water level in the reservoirs due to evaporation loss.

Such loss is estimated to be 5 mm of the total water level during January and February and it would increase during summer months. In terms of water quantity, it would mean a significant loss according to the respective water spread area of the reservoir, the official said.

Dwindling supply

Residents of some areas, including Anna Nagar West, Tondiarpet, Ayanavaram and Villivakkam, complained of dwindling water supply over the past few months.

Residents of Konnur High Road, Ayanavaram, said that though other parts of the city were getting sufficient drinking water supply, they had to depend upon private water suppliers.

However, a Metrowater official attributed the problem that affected Ayanavaram to the ongoing work of strengthening the drinking water pipeline on Konnur High Road.

At Anna Nagar West, a sewage manhole on Thirumangalam Main Road that sunk a few days ago disrupted the water supply in the neighbouring areas.

Work to rectify the problem would be completed shortly.

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