Veeranam water shutoff ‘won’t affect Chennai’

CHENNAI: The suspension of supply since Monday from the Veeranam tank due to declining storage there would not adversely impact on the city drinking water supply, according to Chennai Metrowater officials.

Metrowater plans to sustain the present supply of 645 million litres of water a day (mld), including to industries, with the available water resources till the forthcoming monsoon. To offset the suspension of water supply from Veeranam tank, Metrowater has stepped up drawal from Chembarambakkam reservoir.

A Metrowater official said the combined storage of the four city reservoirs stood at a comfortable 3.6 thousand million cubic (tmc) feet. The drawal from Red Hills reservoir, the city’s prime storage point, has been stepped up by 50 mld for a week now. Earlier, the reservoir supplied about 400 mld to the city.

The Chembarambakkam reservoir, with a storage capacity of 1 tmc of water, is contributing substantially to the city supply now. Metrowater draws between 120 mld and 180 mld from the reservoir, he said.

Well fields in the fringes of the city also supply about 30 mld of water.

Though the water supply from Veeranam tank has been stopped, the city still gets 30 mld drawn from the 45 borewells in Neyveli aquifer. “We can draw up to 60 mld of water from the aquifer according to the city needs,” the official said.

Metrowater is also banking on the release of Krishna water from the Kandaleru reservoir under the Telugu Ganga project next month.

At present, repairs are under way at various stretches of the Kandaleru-Poondi canal bed in Tamil Nadu limit to facilitate free flow of water.

With the reservoirs located upstream Kandaleru, namely Srisailam and Somasila, getting a steady inflow the officials expect to receive water next month.