When push comes to shove, it is time to knock on doors for help. And that is what the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board has planned to do. According to sources in the Board, the officials in Coimbatore have requested a meeting with their counterparts in Kerala to see if the Board could tap the dead storage in the Siruvani Dam.
According to sources, the Board officials here have written to the Chief Engineer in charge of Siruvani seeking a meeting. They wrote the letter about 15 days ago.
The sources said that they expected the meeting to take place either in the last week of January or first week of February and the agenda was to explore the possibility of tapping below the dead storage level. When the monsoon is normal, the TWAD Board taps water from the dam until the level reaches 863.4 m.
The water would drop down to the level only around April-May. But with 2012 monsoon playing truant, the water level has drastically fallen and has, as of Saturday, touched 866.36 m. Or in other words the Board is left with only around 9 m water for supply to wayside habitations and the city.
The Board officials said that if their Kerala counterparts let the Board tap the dead storage, it would get nearly 2,500 million litres water. At 30 to 40 million litres a day, the Board would be able to supply water for around 50 days to the city.
They also say that in the last 10 years, the Board was pushed to such a situation of asking their Kerala counterparts for water below the dead storage.
As of Saturday, the Board supplied nearly 50 million litres a day (mld) Siruvani water to the city.
