With the Poondi reservoir, one of the city’s drinking water sources, receiving more inflow besides Krishna water, the surplus has been released to the Puzhal lake in Red Hills to step up its storage.
Heavy rain over the past few days in the catchment areas upstream and the surplus water released from Ammapalli reservoir in Andhra Pradesh into the Kosasthalaiyar have been bringing considerable inflows to the Poondi reservoir.
The waterbody has already been receiving Krishna water from Andhra Pradesh for a month now. Of the inflow of 810 cusecs (cubic feet per second), the reservoir got 352 cusecs as flood water runoff from catchment areas and the Kosasthalaiyar.
Officials of the Water Resources Department said water was discharged to the Red Hills reservoir due to a dip in storage. Its storage stood at 2.01 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) against a capacity of 3.3 tmcft, and it received about 160 cusecs of water from the Poondi reservoir on Monday.
“We have also been diverting water to the Chembarambakkam reservoir for a week now to boost its storage. Water is being drawn from both lakes to supply the city’s drinking water,” an official said.
The city has been receiving Krishna water since last month, and it has added nearly 2.1 tmcft of storage in the nearby reservoirs.
The four reservoirs together have storage of 5.4 tmcft, which is nearly 50% of their capacity, as on Monday. This will be sufficient to maintain supply till the summer of next year.
With near normal rainfall predicted during the northeast monsoon, officials noted that Krishna water and rain water would be sufficient to maintain supply.