Last week’s rainfall has replenished the water level at the city’s reservoirs, following which the Metrowater board has decided to enhance the daily water supply from 470MLD (millions of litres per day) to 650MLD.
This was announced in Ripon Buildings on Tuesday by Municipal administration and water supply department minister SP Velumani and the change would be effective immediately as per a report in the Times of India.
Metrowater had reduced the water supply earlier this year due to drought and now the government plans to draw 120MLD per day from the Veeranam Lake from Wednesday, to increase the supply.
“The water drawn from Veeranam will be brought to the KK Nagar water treatment plant and then diverted to residences. We have been increasing the daily supply by 20MLD every two days over the last week,“ an official told TOI.
The increased water supply is expected to benefit southern parts of the city, along with a few localities in the central region.
Between October 30 and November 7, the city received 47.38cm of rainfall and this has increased the water levels in the five city reservoirs, which is still only 35% of the total capacity, Velumani said.
However, before the Metrowater restores the normal daily water supply of 850MLD, the reservoirs will have to be at least 80% of their total capacity, as per sources.
While Poondi reservoir is currently holding 656 million cubic feet (mcft) of water, Sholavaram reservoir's storage is 464mcft. Puzhal lake has 11,152mcft water, Chembarambakkam reservoir has 1,211mcft and Veeranam lake is holding 881mcft of water, Velumani told TOI.
Despite the increase in supply, the daily piped water supply in old city corporation limits will not resume immediately, according to Metrowater officials.
Earlier, Velumani said that the Greater Chennai Corporation has received 6,955 monsoon related complaints, out of which 6,347 complaints have been solved. He added that only 89 of the 269 areas which recorded water stagnation, remain to be cleared.