WRDs new plan to provide continuous water supply to Chennai residents!!
Posted on: 30/Sep/2023 9:02:27 AM
With a large population in Chennai, there is a huge need now for the continuous supply of water to meet the requirements of the residents. For this, a new detailed plan is being drafted by the WRD or Water Resources Department now.
It is now said that WRD would be increasing the storage capacity of Sholavaram Lake to threefold from 18.86 feet to 22feet. The Sholavaram Lake is an important drinking water source for the residents of Chennai and it has got a storage capacity of 1.081mcft.
Measures have been taken to obtain preliminary feasibility reports for expanding the Sholavaram Lake capacity. This was highlighted by a senior official from WRD. He hinted that WRD would be devising a plan to desilt the lake and increase its capacity to 3 tmcft. For this purpose, WRD has already held discussions with the TN government also.
Huge requirement for Chennai residents:
Annually, Chennai city requires 20000 mcft of drinking water and this was mentioned by another official from WRD. He spoke about how the existing Chennai water reservoirs like Poondi, Cholavaram, Red Hills, Chembarambakkam etc could store just 13213 tmcft. Point is that the requirements of Chennai would increase to 25000 million cubic feet per year.
It is noteworthy that there is a pressing need to increase the water storage capacities in and around Chennai. Not only WRD has been planning to increase the storage capacity of the Sholavaram Lake but it also has initiated projects in smaller water bodies to increase the capacity. It is important to mention that in the next 5 years there are plans to store 20tmcft of water in and around Chennai city.
According to a water expert Professor S. Janakarajan, it was important to augment the existing drinking water reservoirs plus conserve rainwater also. He added that this could be achieved by transforming lakes into reservoirs.
