The Poondi reservoir has started receiving Krishna water, discharged from the Kandaleru reservoir, from Monday evening, officials of the Water Resources Department here said.
According to them, about 200 cubic feet per second (cusecs) was realised at the Poondi reservoir by 6 a.m. on Tuesday. (One cusec of water is equal to 28.3 litres). As the discharge from the Kandaleru reservoir has been stepped up to 1,900 cusecs, the Poondi reservoir is expected to receive about 800 cusecs by Thursday.
“We have asked for the release of water to continue till April for augmenting the city supply,” said an official. This is the second time that Chennai is being supplied with Krishna water in 2009-10. The city had realised 4.1 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) from the Kandaleru reservoir between September and December 2009.
Since 2006, Chennai has been getting around six tmcft of water every year. Uthukottai, the inter-State border of the Kandaleru Poondi canal got 6.9 tmcft of water in 2008-09, which was the highest quantum received since the commissioning of the Krishna Water Supply project a decade ago.
“If we get two or three tmcft during this spell, it will be sufficient to cater to the city’s water needs till the onset of the northeast monsoon,” an official said.
The cumulative storage of the four reservoirs that cater for Chennai — Poondi, Cholavaram, Red Hills and Chembarambakkam — stood at 6.7 tmcft against its capacity of 11 tmcft on Tuesday.
