City's water position looks bleak, tough summer ahead

By T. Ramakrishnan

CHENNAI, FEB. 11. As Chennai is in the initial phase of the second drought year in succession, residents are worried as to how the Government is going to manage the water supply during the peak summer, only a couple of months away.

The Red Hills tank and Satyamurthi Sagar in Poondi, the mainstay of water supply, have a combined storage which is a mere one- fifth of their capacity. For a comparison, the present storage of Red Hills and Poondi is 1,425 mcft against 1,491 mcft in February 2000.

Moreover, the civic authorities do not have the `luxury' this time to fall back on Chembarampakkam tank whose water storage was used to maintain the supply at 250 million litres a day (MLD) last year. This age-old tank had nearly 1,000 mcft a year ago whereas it is almost empty now with the storage at 13 mcft.

To compound the situation, the levels of six well-fields are less compared to last year during the same period. These fields used to supply water to the industry and supplement the city supply.

To top it all, Krishna water, which Tamil Nadu initially hoped to get till April-end, may not flow in after March. It is against this bleak scenario that the question about the continuation of water supply arises.

A senior official in the Government even concedes that ``the situation looks frightening''. However, the Chennai Metrowater is confident of ``weathering the Water Crisis-II,'' as it has prepared a ``sound drought management plan''. The water agency asserts that it will maintain the existing supply of 250 MLD for the next six months.

At the present rate of Krishna water flow, the storage goes up daily by eight mcft, which is equivalent to a day's consumption. Assuming that the flow continues till the end of March, the storage, that may be available then, will suffice for meeting a major bulk of the demand till August.

To fill the shortfall, wells of agriculturists on northern outskirts of the city will be used. There are about 900 wells belonging in and around the six well-fields, which are an agglomerate of numerous deep borewells put up by the Chennai Metrowater.

Initially, the drawal from the private wells will be 20 MLD which will be increased to 40 MLD later. As a supplementary measure, seven more deepwells will be dug by the Metrowater, and they will feed 10 MLD to the city.

``Our calculation is based on the conservative estimate that there will be nil addition to the city storage. But, we hope that the Nature will come to our rescue. An unseasonal rainspell in the last week of February last year increased the storage by about 360 mcft,'' officials of the Metrowater say.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh has hinted that the inflow of Krishna water will be better in a week because the harvest operations in areas along the Andhra Pradesh portion of the Kandaleru-Poondi canal, are coming to an end.

As of now, about 300 cusecs of Krishna water is realised at the Zero Point on the border of Andhra Pradesh-Tamil Nadu.

PWD officials, who coordinate with the Andhra Pradesh Government for Krishna water supply, say ``we see no reason why the city should not continue to get it in April too''. Now, the storage at Kandaleru is around 12,500 mcft and the release for Poondi can be maintained comfortably till the level touches the storage of 7,000 mcft.

It is not just Metrowater, but the Government, that is under pressure to protect the city taps from going dry. With elections round the corner, water can become a real political issue. And the Government is acutely aware of that too.

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