Krishna water supply to city cut as Kandaleru storage dips

Chennai has received 2.28tmcft (thousand million cubic feet) of water from Andhra Pradesh since late January 2018. Curiously, the quantum of water realised this time is much less than last year when the city received over 3tmcft despite a near drought situation in 2016. 

Though PWD engineers are confident that the existing storage position in the four city reservoirs would be sufficient to quench the city easily for more than five months, a back of the envelope calculation suggests that Poondi, Puzhal, Cholavaram and Chembarambakkam, which jointly store 4.7tmcft (total joint storage capacity 11.257tmcft), would keep the city’s water pipes flowing until the end of July. More importantly, the city would not face an acute water shortage like last year until July, during the peak summer time. 

Reservoir storage apart, the two desalination plants at Minjur and Nemmeli (both of 100mld capacity) would be other assured water sources for the city. However, Veeranam, which normally comes to the rescue by supplying 180mld has come a cropper this time as the 1.2tmcft reservoir has nearly run dry. CMWSSB (Chennai metro water) has been tapping only 80mld from the lake, compared to the usual 180mld from Veeranam. 

CMWSSB officials, who claimed to supply 650mld to the city, told this newspaper that they are tapping 280mld from the desalination plants and Veeranam, and the rest from the four reservoirs. Even if Veeranam is taken out of the equation, which could happen anytime in the coming months, CMWSSB officials could compensate it by sourcing water discharged from the lignite mines in Neyveli. “Therefore, storage of the reservoirs would last for more months. Water would be tapped form borewells in Tiruvallur only when the discharge from the mines becomes unreliable,” a senior CMWSSB officer reasoned.