WRD defers request for Krishna water release as Chennai reservoirs brim

With Chennai’s major reservoirs brimming with storage, the Water Resources Department (WRD) has deferred its request for the release of Krishna water from Andhra Pradesh for the current spell by a month.

The five drinking water reservoirs have a combined storage of nearly 95% of their total capacity of 11,757 million cubic feet as of Thursday. In the meantime, the department will utilise the break in Krishna water supply to undertake crucial repair works on canals linking waterbodies, to reduce conveyance losses.

Chennai must be provided with 4,000 mcft during January and April, as per the inter-State agreement under the Krishna Water Supply project. Officials of the WRD, however, said the department had written to Andhra Pradesh authorities to delay water discharge by about a month owing to ample storage in the reservoirs.

Poondi reservoir in Tiruvallur district, which stores Krishna water released from AP’s Kandaleru reservoir, received nearly 3, 792 mcft of water during the previous spell between July and October last year.

Officials said work is already in progress to repair vulnerable portions of the Link canal, which conveys water from Poondi to Chembarambakkam reservoir. “We are executing works to repair the damaged slope lining in various stretches of 25-km long canal. Once the ₹1.5 crore project is completed, the canal efficiency would improve, enabling it to carry maximum quantity of water,” said an official.

Similarly, works will be implemented to strengthen the Kandaleru-Poondi Canal and the 21-km-long feeder canal that transmits water from Poondi to Red Hills reservoir. The ₹10.75-crore project aims at strengthening the damaged portions along a nearly 3.3-km stretch through slope protection lining and retaining wall to improve bund stability. Portions near Sirukadal regulator point, where the feeder canal branches off from Link Canal, would be taken up for the project.

Nearly four-km of the vulnerable portions of Kandaleru-Poondi Canal also would be improved at a cost of ₹10.2 crore to prevent bund erosion and seepage loss.

These works were imperative to convey and store optimal quantity of Krishna water and increase flow velocity. Such works were carried out in a phased manner to maintain the canal’s structural condition, said officials.