A team of officials from the Water Resources Department and Chennai Metrowater visited their counterparts in Hyderabad on Monday to discuss the date of water release from the Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra Pradesh to Chennai.
According to sources in the WRD, a three-member team visited the neighbouring State following the order given a few days ago by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy to discharge water and meet Chennai's needs.
The Kandaleru reservoir, located upstream of waterbody in Poondi near the city, with a capacity of 68.03 tmcft, currently has a storage of 38 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft). This is sufficient to provide water to the city as well apart from catering to Andhra Pradesh's requirements.
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The officials here said that they expected the water to be released in a day or two. Once discharged into the Kandaleru-Poondi canal, water has to travel 152 km to reach the inter-State border in Uthukottai.
Storage adequate
The storage in the four reservoirs in Poondi, Red Hills, Cholavaram and Chembarampakkam is adequate to supply the city till the onset of northeast monsoon.
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On Monday, the combined storage of the waterbodies was 5,407 tmcft against the capacity of 11 tmcft. This is nearly 600 million cubic feet more than storage during the same period last year.
Krishna water from the neighbouring State would help in stepping up the reservoirs' water level, officials said.
According to the agreement between Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh under the Krishna water supply project, Andhra Pradesh has to release 12 tmcft of water during two spells, between July and October and January and April. Of this, four tmcft was to be released during January-April.
Chennai received water for the first spell for 2010-11 only from October last year instead of July.
The Andhra Pradesh government supplied nearly 4.6 tmcft of water till January-end this year. As there was sufficient storage in the city reservoirs, the officials here did not immediately seek the second instalment of water discharge then. However, the WRD has been requesting the release of Krishna water since mid-April.
As per the agreement, the Andhra Pradesh government has to supply one tmcft every month for a period of four months during the second spell.
Chennai has received nearly 50.6 tmcft of Krishna water since the project was implemented in 1996.