With lakes full, supply of Krishna water to city stopped

According to a Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (Metrowater) source, the release of Krishna River water was stopped following the request of the Metrowater and Water Resource Department. 

“The release was stopped gradually. Presently, the zero points at the border received only 63 cusecs. Moreover, only 50 cusecs reached Poondi lake,” the source said. 

The source added that present storage in the city lakes is highest in the last few years owing to which supply to the city increased up to 975 million litres per day. On Monday, 973 million litres was supplied to Chennai. 

The water manager increased the supply to 900 million litres per day on August 15 and the same has been gradually increased to 975 million litres per day. 

Between September 20, 2020, and February 18, 2021, the city had received more than 7 TMC of water from Andhra Pradesh. As per the Telugu Ganga agreement between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, the neighbouring state should release 12 TMC of water every year. 

Meanwhile, more than 5 TMC of water was received between June 2021 to September 19, 2021. 

As per the Metrowater data, the five lakes that supply drinking water to the city had combined storage of 9,542 mcft on Monday morning, which is more than 81 per cent storage as the lakes have a total capacity of 11,757 mcft. 

Among the lakes, Redhills lake had the highest storage with 3,022 mcft of water. Poondi lake and Chembarambakkam lake had storage of 2,639 mcft and 2,795 mcft of water. Cholavaram lake and Kannankottai Thervoykandigai lake had 646 mcft and 463 mcft respectively. 

During the same day the previous year, the lakes had combined storage of only 3,992 mcft.