Metro Water to increase supply to 700 MLD

“We could only supply 525 MLD in the summer due to water scarcity. As the rains started to fill the lakes, we increased the water supply to 650 MLD last week. Supply will be further increased to 700 MLD from next week. Discussions were held regarding this,” a Metro Water official said.

Meanwhile, the Metro Water stopped operating around 250 small tankers with a capacity of 2,000 litres and 3,000 litres. Also, the daily trips of 6,000 litres and 9,000 litres have also been reduced to around 7,000 trips per day from 10,500 trips that were operated during the water crisis.

“Bookings for tanker lorries have come down to around 1,500. During the water crisis, we had received around 2,500 bookings per day. Due to the measures taken to increase rainwater harvesting structures, groundwater level in the city has increased. This is also one of the reasons for the lesser number of tanker bookings,” he added. The official explained that the city lakes – Poondi, Cholavaram, Redhills and Chembarambakkam lakes – are filling up and they had 3,049 mcft of water on Saturday. 

On the same day previous year, the lakes had only 1,717 mcft of water. “While rains are contributing, the major portion of the water is being received from Krishna River.” According to Metrowater data, Poondi lake that receives Krishna water had 1,518 mcft as on Saturday. Redhills and Chembarambakkam had 1,045 mcft and 281 mcft respectively, while Cholavaram had 205 mcft.

It may be noted that the water manager had reduced the water supply to 620 MLD from the usual supply of 830 MLD in December 2018 after the failed monsoon.