Chennai: With drinking water crisis escalating, Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam on Saturday wrote to his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N. Chandrababu Naidu requesting for immediate release of Krishna river water honouring the 1983 inter-state agreement.
“Chennai city is critically dependent on the release of Krishna water, in order to manage the difficult situation in which we find ourselves this year,” O. Panneerselvam said in his letter.
Elaborating on the crisis, he said Tamil Nadu and Chennai primarily depended on northeast monsoon for bulk of the rainfall but 2016 saw monsoon failing badly. Rainfall in Chennai city had been deficient by nearly 57 per cent. And the water level in the city’s drinking water reservoirs “is very low”.
“…the meagre storage currently available needs to be augmented to meet the drinking water supply requirements of Chennai city over the next few months.
Therefore, we depend on the release of Krishna water from the Kandaleru reservoir to partly tide over the drinking water supply to Chennai city till July, 2017,” Panneerselvam told the AP CM, seeking his “personal intervention” for the release of Krishna water. Krishna water reaches Poondi reservoir by a canal and is sent by two feeder canals to Red Hills lake and Chembarambakkam lake.
As per the agreement of April 18, 1983, 8 tmc ft of Krishna water is to be supplied to Chennai between July and October and another 4 tmc ft from January to April. “However, a quantum of only 0.99 tmc ft has been realised at the Tamil Nadu border in the period from October to December 2016”, Panneerselvam told Chandrababu. “I am given to understand that as on January 5, 2017, Kandaleru reservoir has storage of 13.53 tmc ft. Therefore, Andhra Pradesh appears to be in a position to release water from Kandaleru reservoir for Chennai city,” Panneerselvam said.
