CHENNAI: The Water Resources Department (WRD) will procure 1,000 Automatic Rain Gauges (ARG) to obtain accurate rainfall data from across the State. A senior official in WRD told TNIE that the State government sanctioned Rs 25 crore from the State disaster risk and mitigation fund for the 1,000 ARGs.
The WRD, however, requested the government to increase the project cost as automatic weather stations would have to be set up to house the ARGs. For this, a proposal worth Rs 85 crore has been submitted to the government. Once the fund is released, the tender process to procure ARGs would begin. TN Disaster Risk Reduction Agency is the sole authority to initiate the tender process for the procurement of ARGs and install them.
Another official said that it was necessary to submit a detailed project report to the government before the bidding process and that WRD was preparing it in association with the disaster risk reduction agency.
On data collection, he said: “TN receives rains in two seasons that help replenish its water resources.
While the southwest monsoon accounts for 35% of the rains, the northeast monsoon accounts for 48%. We intend to develop a data collection in phases to acquire reliable figures.” He pointed out that there was a plan to procure Auto Rain Gauges to upgrade the weather observation network in Chennai as well.