Krishna River Water to overcome drinking water shortage in Chennai – River water release on 25th March
The water level in Chennai’s major drinking water supplying reservoirs Poondi, Puzhal, Chambarambakkam, and Cholavaram are quite low. Hence, Chennai city will have depend greatly on the availability of Krshna river water.
The
capacity of the Poondi reservoir is 3323 mcft (million cubic feet). Currently,
the water is only 175 mcft.
Since
drinking water shortage is frequent in summers, the authorities initiated steps
to procure Krishna river water.
As per
this, Krishna river water received from 14th January (Pongal) in the Poondi
reservoir..
Since
the agriculturists from Andhra Pradesh started utilizing Krishna river water
for their requirements, the flow of water to Poondi reservoir became very low.
As a warning to the agriculturists, AP officials stopped flow of water from the
Kandaleru dam. With stringent monitoring of the Krishna canal water flow,
Andhra Pradesh jas announced that it will open and allow floe of Krishna river
water in the canal.
The
release will be on 1st April
allowing a daily flow of 800 cft by allowing release of 2000 cft of water from
the dam.
.Currently,
Kandaleru dame holds 23tmcft of water. Water to Chennai will be released for
the next 3 months.
As per
the agreement between tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, 12 tmcft of water is to be
released every yesr from Krishna river. As per this, 4 tmcft of water will be
released from 1st January
to 30th April and 8
tmcft water from 1st July
to 31st October.
However,
there was a breach in the water storage facility in Upaala Madhagu and repair
work was taken up. Due to this, only 2 tmcft water was received during July to
October last year. This year, only 1.86 tmcft water has been received by
Chennai during January to April.
.AP
water authorities have promised that water released as per the agreement from
April.
This has given the city residents some respite.
