The water resources department (WRD) plans to complete the city’s fifth storage facility — the Thervoy Kandigai-Kannan Kottai reservoir — by May, a few months ahead of schedule.
With most of the land needed for the project acquired, the department has taken up work on various components simultaneously. Meanwhile, a portion of the work to link water bodies in Kannankottai had to be suspended temporarily as farmers had demanded that the work be stalled in the acquired lands till harvest.
K. Rangan, a resident of Kannankottai, said it was decided at a meeting at the Tiruvallur collectorate earlier this week that the farmers will be given three months time to harvest the paddy cultivated in the lands acquired. “We were assured that interim compensation for the lands acquired will be given soon. We also want compensation for the crops destroyed during work,” he said.
However, work to create the bund at Kannankottai will be taken up and only the portion to create the water-spread area has been stopped, an official said.
About 40 per cent of the Rs. 330-crore-project, which aims to merge the two water bodies in Tiruvallur district has been completed so far. Work is on simultaneously to build 25 structures, including bridges and culverts, across the eight-km canal, which will bring Krishna water to the reservoir.
The department also looks to create additional capacity in the reservoir as sand would be excavated to form the 7-km-long bund. The reservoir was designed to have a capacity to hold 500 million cubic feet, which is half-a-month’s water requirement of the city.
The reservoir will supply 66 million litres a day to Poondi reservoir from where water is distributed to Chennai.
