Struggling with only 22% of total capacity in the city’s reservoirs, the State government plans to ask Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister to release Krishna water due for the month of July.
While the discharge of Krishna water is crucial to meet the drinking water needs of the city, facing a severe water shortage for the second successive year, PWD officials here said the storage in A.P. reservoirs was also dismal.
Earlier this year, the city received nearly 2,000 mcft of Krishna water between January and March that helped in sustaining water supply through the summer.
Tamil Nadu is entitled to 12,000 mcft of water under the Telugu Ganga Project to cater to its water requirements. Of this, about 8,000 mcft is to be discharged between July and October.
However, this time the storage in the Kandaleru reservoir, from where water is discharged to the city, is dismal. It has only 5,700 mcft against its capacity of 68,000 mcft, say PWD sources.
Still, the State plans to raise the issue with the A.P. government, seeking release whenever storage in the Andhra reservoirs improves. The Chief Minister is likely to write a letter to his A.P. counterpart. Talks are on to convene a meeting on water sharing, officials said.
Already, Andhra Pradesh had conveyed that only 2.3 thousand million cubic feet of water could be provided, and the rest of the share must be provided by Telangana. According to the Telugu Ganga Project, unified Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra have to jointly release 15 tmcft. The State had to take up the issue of inconsistencies in water release with the Central Water Commission.
At present, the lakes in Poondi, Red Hills, Cholavaram and Chembarambakkam have storage of 2,432 million cubic feet (mcft), which is only 22 % of their total capacity.
At present, Chennai is being supplied with 650 million litres a day. For nearly two years now, Chennai is being provided piped water supply on alternate days for want of resources.