Chennai to get 500 cusecs of Krishna water before Pongal

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

The Pongal is likely to be sweeter for Chennaites as the city is likely to get 500 cusecs of Krishna water each day from Kandaleru reservoir in the next three days.

Chief engineer of water resources department R Emaraj told Express that the discharge of water from Andhra Pradesh will soon be normal as the old canal has been linked with a new structure on Thursday.

This will help ensure that the state gets at least 500 cusecs of water before Pongal. The flow will soon be increased to 1,000 cusecs by the end of this month, said Emaraj.

“Currently, 2,500 cusecs of water has been released from Kandaleru and it will reach the city through the new canal,” said Emaraj.

The discharge of water from Kandaleru reservoir was hit since mid-April following repair works being carried out in the portion of Kandaleru Poondi canal in Ubbalamadugu in Andhra Pradesh. Water supply was intermittent and had to be stopped on many occasions. The repair work was finished only last month but then the old canal was to be linked with the new structure so that the supply could be resumed. The flow from Kandaleru was stopped more than two weeks ago.

Interestingly, this could come as a welcome sign for Metro Water which is struggling to meet the drinking water demands and has prepared contingency plans to tackle the challenge.

Currently, there is only 3.3 tmc feet of water in the four reservoirs that is supplying water to the city. Due to the failure of monsoon Chennai Metro Water has already curtailed the supply of water to the city from 835 MLD to 575 MLD of water.