Chennai lakes receive enough water to meet one month’s requirement in a day
CHENNAI: The heavy rains lashing the southern parts of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh have brought substantial inflow to Poondi reservoir, sending up its storage by a whopping 611 million cubic feet (mcft) in just a day. Including this, the overall storage in the five lakes that supply water to Chennai has increased close to thousand mcft (TMC) in a day. To put this in perspective, one TMC water is sufficient to meet the city’s drinking water requirement for a month.
According to Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (Metro Water) data, Poondi, Red Hills, Chembarambakkam, Cholavaram and Thervoykandigai reservoirs had 9,856 mcft water on Saturday morning, which is 847 mcft (0.85 TMC) more than the storage recorded on Friday when they had 9,009 mcft water.
On Saturday morning, Poondi lake received around 30,000 cusecs. However, as the reservoir is already 91 per cent of its capacity, the same volume of water was released after issuing flood warning to the people live along Kosasthalaiyar river.
“During the last two weeks, the inflow, especially to Poondi lake, has been higher. The water is being discharged as a safety measure. During this period, more than 2 TMC water would have been discharged,” said an official.
As per the data, Poondi lake has 2,953 mcft on Saturday, while Chembarambakkam has 2,855 mcft, Red Hills 2,715 mcft and Cholavaram 833 mcft, while Thervoykandigai lake is full to the brim with 500 mcft.
The official added that the storage level in Poondi lake will be decreased if the heavy inflow continues.