Reservoirs running dry in Tamil Nadu

Chennai: Another cyclone, Lehar, hit the southeastern coast of India. The city received a few spells of heavy rain for a couple of days, but it has brought little cheer to the city’s water managers. It has been a bad water ye­ar for the city which has sh­­o­wn no improvement in respect of water levels de­spite the frequent cyclone scares.

What appeared to be a heavy downpour in the city was actually no more than a passing cloud in the reservoir catchments which recorded low rainfall. For instance, the four reservoirs —Chemb­aram­bakkam, Sholavaram, Pu­z­hal and Poondi put together, received only 17 mcft (million cubic feet) on Wednesday and 32 mcft the day before.

Worse, it reduced to 3 mcft on Thursday. The joint storage stood at little over 3.7 tmcft, against joint full storage level of 11.057 tmcft. The only silver lining has been the steady inflow to Veeranam lake and recharge of gro­und water levels in the city.

Veeranam stores 1.042 tmcft, against its full reservoir level of 1.456 tmcft. Referring to discharge from Veeranam for irrigation, confident CM­WSSB (Chennai metro water) officials said that Veeranam could be filled again once before the shutters of the Mettur dam are downed in Jan­uary and the 1.4 tmcft storage could be utilised for the city’s supply.

Also, the city’s groundwater level has increased between 0.45 to 0.6 meters (1.5 to 3 feet) since the onset of the northeast mo­n­soon. Perhaps, Chen­na­iites would be asked to rely on their borewells rat­her than the piped supply this summer.