The rain spell over the weekend is continuing to bring inflow and has augmented the storage in the four city reservoirs that sustain the city’s drinking water supply.
In the past two days, inflow from catchment areas to the water bodies in Poondi, Cholavaram, Red Hills and Chembarambakkam have added nearly 500 million cubic feet (mcft), enough to maintain supply for a fortnight.
An official of Water Resources Department said on Monday, Poondi reservoir continued to receive a heavy inflow of nearly 2,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs).
However, sources of Chennai Metrowater said though the storage had increased considerably, it was not enough for the water agency to resume daily water supply in the city. The existing storage of the four water bodies was still at 3,153 mcft, lesser, by 1,360 mcft, than the storage recorded on the same day last year.
This storage would be sufficient for supply till March-end. But, the storage has to reach 8,000 mcft to revert to a daily water supply of 830 million litres a day, they added.
Meanwhile, the meteorological department has predicted that Chennai will experience subdued weather for the next three days barring isolated rains. Officials of the met department said they are monitoring the system forming over east-central Bay of Bengal. Only if it reaches a lower latitude, the system will benefit the State. Chennai and Meenambakkam have received 14 cm of rainfall in the three days till Monday morning.
Chennai needs a few more heavy rain spells to record the normal of 85 cm during the northeast monsoon. There is still hope for such spells with five more weeks to go for the withdrawal of the monsoon, an official added.
