NE monsoons in Chennai causing an increase in the groundwater levels now!!
Posted on: 11/Nov/2023 9:15:14 AM
The onset of NE monsoons has not only brought rains but also an increase in the ground water levels in Chennai. It is important to mention that on Friday localities like Alandur, Perungudi and Adyar etc received 96mm, 58.5mm and 56.4mm of rains respectively. The groundwater levels have improved now due to the rains.
It was brought to light by real time monitoring data of CMW that the current ground levels are 0.97 mm in New Street in Alandur,0.5mm in Rajalakshmi Nagar in Velachery (part of Adyar zone), 0.7m in Karthikeyapuram in Madipakkam and 0.4m in IIT Colony in Pallikaranai (underPerungudi zone).
Founder of Rain centre, Mr. Sekar Raghavan expressed his thoughts and spoke about how the water levels show the amount of water in shallow aquifers. Point is that while digging up bore wells, people go up to 30m tapping the deep aquifers and do not bother to use the shallow aquifers. By this, there could be flooding also just similar to the 2021 flooding in the city. He concluded that the public must use the water in the shallow aquifers to prevent flood type situation again now.
Information is that groundwater goes into 2 types of aquifers that are shallow (where the water is much purer) and deep. The groundwater level that was high was responsible for the flooding of their houses and this was as per a resident from Kotturpuram.
Many added areas in Chennai, such as Valasaravakkam and Manali zones also have high groundwater levels now. This was according to the real time groundwater data from CMW. The water is just below the surface in Nolambur belonging to Valasaravakkam zone and groundwater is at 0m. The water level is at 0.3m in Kadapakkam belonging to the Manali zone.
The reason for that is that the built up areas in the added zones are less than those in core places. This has led to more natural recharge. In high dense areas like Sowcarpet etc, the water recharge would be low but extraction would be high. This would result in low groundwater levels. Point is that the groundwater levels in Sowcarpet and Broadway etc are more than 10m below the ground.
