Consequent upon the April 28 meeting between the Ministers and officials of Kerala and Tamil Nadu on sharing water, the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board had started pumping water from the Siruvani Dam for supply to Coimbatore.
The supply of water was one of the issues in the interstate meeting and Kerala had permitted TWAD Board to draw up to 100 million litres a day (mld) from the dead storage. Following the green signal, the Board began pumping eight mld on Saturday after Chief Engineer M. Nagarajan, Executive Engineers V.C. Nagarajan and S. Sampathkumar, Assistant Executive Engineer N. Subramaiam, Assistant Engineer Pattan and Works Inspector Devanathan visited the spot.
Sources said that by Monday the Board had increased the supply to 25 mld and in the next few days it would increase the supply to 40 mld. The Board would not draw 100 mld as permitted because so much water was not needed to feed the nine wards in the Coimbatore Corporation that were entirely dependent on Siruvani water.
The Coimbatore Corporation had made alternative water supply arrangements for other wards that were Siruvani dependent in that it had routed water from the Pilloor supply line.
The sources said that the Board would supply 40 mld for the next 30 days for the same the Corporation would pay around Rs. 50 lakh to the Board. The Board had installed two pump sets now, each of which 3,000 litres per minute. It would increase the number of pump sets, which would run on diesel.
The sources pointed out that pumping water from Dam was unprecedented because since the commissioning of the Siruvani water supply project in 1984 the Board had never used generators to pump water. During the 2003-04 drought the Board had attempted to draw water using generators but did not obtain permission from the Kerala Government.
