CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government plans to transport 10 million litres of water daily by rail from Jolarpettai in Vellore district to meet the water needs of parched Chennai.
Announcing this on Friday, Chief Minister K.Palaniswami welcomed Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's offer to supply water to Tamil Nadu.
Vijayan's office had on Thursday offered to supply 20 lakh litres of drinking water to neighbouring Tamil Nadu by train. Palaniswami said the state government had written to Kerala requesting whether it could release 20 lakh litres of water per day.
While Cholavaram (full capacity 1,081 mcft) and Redhills (full capacity 3,300 mcft) reservoirs that supply water to Chennai have run dry, there is only 1 mcft of water left in Chembarambakkam lake (against a full capacity of 3,645 mcft) and 21 mcft water left in Poondi reservoir (against a full capacity of 3,231 mcft), according to the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (Chennai Metro).
Earlier, at a meeting that he chaired in the Secretariat to take stock of the water situation in the state, Palaniswami ordered allocation of Rs 200 crore for drinking water schemes in Tamil Nadu. This is in addition to Rs 710 crore allocated earlier.