Chennai has adequate water for next five months

Veeranam to get half TMC feet of water by Wednesday

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

The city has adequate water for next five months and Veeranam reservoir will be flowing with water again by tomorrow evening, according to officials from water resources department.

The Water resources department official told Express that Veeranam lake, which has 0.03 tmcft of water, would get another 0.5 thousand million cubic feet by Wednesday evening. The reservoir has a capacity of 1.4 tmc feet of water. “We will be getting the water from Mettur, which is getting additional 2.44 TMC feet of water from Karnataka,” said the official.

Interestingly, water supply from Veeranam was suspended due to lack of water in the reservoir. Interestingly, officials from Water resource Department and Metro Water denied there is any immediate crisis following Veeranam reservoir running dry.

Cuurently, the city is dependent on four reservoirs – Poondi, Cholavaram, Red Hills and Chembarambakam. Veeranam supplements the water supply. But with the commissioning of desalination plant in Nemelli later this month, the city is likely to get additional 100 MLD of water.

Water Resources Department officials said that the four reservoirs which supply water has 5 TMCft of water which is adequate for next five months along with .5 TMC ft of water from Veeranam.

Interestingly, the city is also getting Krishna Water from Kandleru reservoir. Metro water sources said that they expect another 4 tmc ft of water from Krishna river. But Water resources department said that currently Poondi reservoir is receiving more than 150 cusecs of water from Krishna due to some ongoing repair works. “Once it is finished we will be getting 1,000 cusecs of water per day,” said the water resources department official.  Last week Poondi was getting only 100 cusecs of water.

Currently, the city supplies 830 mld of water a day. Sources said one TMC feet of water lasts for one month and  currently the city has 4.7 tmc feet of water in addition to 100 MLD water from Minjur and an expected additional 100 MLD of water from Nemelli later this month. More than 98 per cent of work has been completed in Nemelli desalination plant as Minister for Rural development and Municipal administration K P Munnusamy and senior officials recently inspected the work in the plant. The plant constructed at a cost of Rs 871.24 cr is set to quench the thirst of more than 15 lakh people in South Chennai.

Reservoirs       storage (mcft)               current level

Poondi                         3231                   1143

Cholavaram                  881                       196

Redhills                        3300                      2270

Chembarabakkam        3645                     1111

Total                           11057                      4720