Reservoirs At Half Capacity As Summer Peaks | Chennai News - Times of India

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Chennai: With nearly 53% water still left in the city's six

reservoirs

, Chennai will not face any drinking water shortage in near-future, say water managers. It will, however, feel the pinch in case of monsoon failure or shortfall of rain next season. This is the most critical phase of

summer

as surface evaporation is intensifying, pulling down water levels further.

This time last year, the six reservoirs - Poondi, Chembarambakkam, Cholavaram, Redhills, Kannankottai-Thervoykandigai and Veeranam - together had 8.4 thousand million cubic feet of water.

Now they hold only about 7tmcft. The combined storage of all these six drinking waterbodies is 13.2tmcft. Additionally, Veeranam lake is dry this year due to poor storage in Mettur dam, whereas the lake had 605mcft water last year.

Metrowater's new 150 million litres a day (MLD) Nemmeli desalination plant is supplying 100.77MLD as of now. With this, Metrowater has been maintaining supply of more than 1,000MLD-1,050MLD daily for the city, say officers.

But more water is needed for 88lakh consumers. As per the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs, every person must get 135L a day. So, the city water board must supply 1,188MLD.

The other two 100MLD desalination plants are also not operating at full capacity. The 100MLD Nemmeli plant only supplies 70.6MLD and the Minjur plant supplies 40MLD. Metrowater planned to retrofit older desalination plants with newer reverse osmosis membranes to supply them to their full capacity, but works are yet to begin.

Water resources department officials said that when the southwest monsoon begins, they would get Krishna river water. With the three desalination plants, the city will get water until Sept, even without rains, said a Metrowater official.

"If there are no rains this year, we will face water scarcity. To reduce evaporation loss, reservoir water must be sent to quarries, because the latter have less surface area. The govt can transfer water at 150cusecs to save up to 38% of Chembarambakkam water during heavy rains, which would be released as reservoir surplus during floods," said L Elango, a hydrogeology professor at IIT Madras.

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