Water level in the Siruvani Reservoir continues to be critical and it has impacted water supply to the city. According to sources, the water level that dipped below the dead storage level (DSL) continued to remain so, impacting the quantity of water supplied to the city.
As of June 27, 2016, the water position stood at two feet below the DSL as the South West Monsoon had not helped improve the water table, as it does during June every year.
On June 1, 2016, the water level was 0.49 foot below the DSL. The water supply to the city then was around 50 million litres a day.
But with the decrease in water level, the quantity too had come down. On Tuesday, the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board that supplies water to Coimbatore Corporation, which in turn distributes it to the wards, tapped only 38.7 million litres.
The Corporation sources said that in June this year, only on eighth did the Siruvani catchments recorded good rainfall – over 90 mm. On June 10, the catchments recorded around 50 mm, on June 17 over 40 mm and on June 22, nearly 45 mm.
But that had not helped improve the supply.
The sources said that if the rainfall had been good, there would be copious inflow in to the Reservoir and the water level would cross the full reservoir level by July. But this year, the situation had turned critical because in 2015, the water had not crossed the full reservoir level even once – during the South West Monsoon season or North East Monsoon season.
On the ground, this has forced the Corporation to decrease the water supply to Siruvani-fed wards from once in four days to once in eight days. A councillor of a Siruvani-fied ward says that the situation is unprecedented.
Even a couple of years ago, when the water level went below the DSL, the civic body managed to supply water once in four days.
The Corporation engineers said they were trying to make good the fall in Siruvani supply with water through the Pilloor scheme. They were diverting around 15 million litres a day.
