The Hindu : Relief hinges on improvement in Kandaleru storage

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 17, 2003

Southern States

Southern States - Tamil Nadu-Chennai

Relief hinges on improvement in Kandaleru storage

By T. Ramakrishnan

CHENNAI NOV. 16. Any relief for Chennai citizens through the Telugu Ganga water now hinges on building up storage at the Kandaleru dam and release of water from across the border.

This morning, the storage of Kandaleru, the terminal storage point in Andhra Pradesh under the Krishna water supply system, stood at 4.22 tmcft (thousand million cubic feet) while other two relevant reservoirs, Somasila and Srisailam, both located upstream of the Kandaleru, had 17.85 tmcft and 135.5 tmcft respectively.

(The Kandaleru dam is about 180 km from the Satyamurthi Sagar at Poondi, one of the three major reservoirs catering to the city supply. The distance between Kandaleru and Somasila is about 40 km while that of Somasila-Srisailam is 180 km.)

``Unless the storage of the Kandaleru goes up, we may not benefit much even if water is pumped from the dam,'' says an expert.

Expressing doubts over the efficacy of the arrangement of pumping water from the Kandaleru as sought by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, the expert points out that as a long distance is to be covered to reach Chennai, there will be many practical difficulties to sustain the pumping of water with the present storage.

About seven months ago, Andhra Pradesh did a similar operation for Tirupati. But, there were two major factors that suited the AP authorities then. One, the distance covered was about 90 km. Two, the requirement for Tirupati was much less and approximately, half-a-tmcft was pumped.

However, in respect of Chennai, the requirement is much more as the city reservoirs are almost empty and have an abysmally poor storage of 0.350 tmcft, besides water having to travel for about 200 km from the Kandaleru before being used for public distribution.

Though Tamil Nadu has sought three tmcft from Andhra Pradesh, the authorities here seem to have no clue how much can be realised by the city. ``Our Chief Secretary is also in touch with her counterpart and we have suggested that the storage be increased in the Kandaleru,'' says an official.

According to the expert, Somasila's storage should touch a minimum of 19.5 tmcft so that water, when released, will flow smoothly to the Kandaleru. For this, Srisailam's water should be transferred to Somasila, because Somasila and even Kandaleru are dependent on flows during northeast monsoon, which has so far played truant.

The expert agrees that the situation in the neighbouring State too is not very comfortable, as the storage in the three dams does not even account for 40 per cent of their gross capacity.

Meanwhile, this morning, the storage of the Satyamurthi Sagar at Poondi was 0.050 tmcft and Red Hills 0.26 tmcft. The Chembarampakkam tank, also used for supplementing the city, had a storage of 0.036 tmcft. Last year, around this time, the combined storage of the three reservoirs and Cholavaram stood at 4.41 tmcft.

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