Illegally diverted, Krishna water to reach city today

Chennai: Illegal diversion by farmers of Krishna river water — expected to reach Poondi reservoir in Tiruvallur district on Monday morning and help solve Chennai’s drinking water crisis — had delayed its arrival in the city by at least two days after Andhra Pradesh released it from its Kandaleru reservoir a week ago.
State public works department (PWD) officials said they expected the water to reach Chennai on Wednesday.
After several meetings and discussions with their Andhra Pradesh counterparts, the PWD officials on Tuesday said they discovered inflow had reduced by the time it reached ‘zero point’ in Uthukottai in Tamil Nadu after travelling through the 152-km canal from Kandaleru reservoir.
A team of engineers discovered during an inspection that farmers along the canal had been diverting water for irrigation.
“It usually takes only five days for the water to reach Poondi from Kandaleru,” a senior PWD official said. “This time it’s taken more than a week.”
He said officials on both sides of the border were closely monitoring water flow in the canal.
The Andhra Pradesh government had released Krishna water at 1,000 cusecs (28,316 litres per second) a week ago from the Kandaleru reservoir on a written request by Tamil Nadu chief minister O Panneerselvam.
Officials say the water has now traversed 142km. It has to travel only 10km more before it reaches Uthukottai, from where it will take 25km to reach Poondi. PWD officials will then pump the water to Metrowater’s Kilpauk treatment plant.
Officials of the two states will at a meeting in in Tirupati this week draw up plans for further release of water from AP. A delegation led by Panneerselvam last week met Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu at Velagapudi, the temporary secretariat complex in the Amaravati capital region, and urged him to a step up release from Kandaleru so at least 5tmcft (thousand million cubic feet) of water reaches Chennai.
Panneerselvam underlined the “dire need” for assured supply from Andhra Pradesh to support Chennai’s drinking water needs. The northeast monsoon, which brings Chennai the bulk of its annual rainfall, has failed this year, with a 57% deficit in the city.
The combined storage of the city’s four main reservoirs at Poondi, Chembarambakkam, Redhills and Cholavaram, is at less than 13% of their combined capacity of 11.05tmcft, forcing Chennai Metrowater to cut supply of water from 831 million litres of water per day (MLD) to 550MLD.