The much awaited release of Krishna water from the Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra Pradesh to Chennai is likely in two or three days, according to Water Resources Department officials.
Nearly 400 cubic feet per second (cusecs) is being discharged since early this week into the Kandaleru Poondi canal for meeting the drinking water needs of Tirupati and the neighbouring areas. “We expect that the discharge would be stepped up to about 1,500 cusecs to supply water to Chennai,” a WRD official said.
The Kandaleru reservoir has a storage of nearly 30.18 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) against its capacity of 63 tmcft.
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Normally, it takes four days for the water from Kandaleru to reach Chennai. Since it has reached Tirupati, which is at the 70-km point of the 152-km long KP canal, it would take about two days for the water from there to reach Chennai. Moreover, the canal bed is wet.
Within the Tamil Nadu limit, water would have to travel another 25 km to reach Poondi reservoir, which is the storage point, the official said.
The city received 7.016 tmcft of water from Andhra Pradesh during 2009-10, which is the highest since the commissioning of the project. Of this, 3 tmcft was released between February and April this year.
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Krishna water is expected to help augment the supply to the city.
The water storage position in the four reservoirs - Poondi, Red Hills, Cholavaram and Chembarambakkam – is comfortable to sustain the daily supply to the city this year.
The combined storage of the reservoirs stood at 4.6 tmcft on Thursday, which is double the storage registered during the corresponding period last year, the official added.