Krishna Water to Add to Pongal Fervour

Pongal is set to be a sweet affair for Chennaites as the city is likely to get 500 cusecs of Krishna water from Kandaleru reservoir for each of the next three days. Chief engineer of Water Resources Department R Emaraj told Express that the discharge of water from Andhra Pradesh will soon be normal as the old canal was linked with a new structure on Thursday.

This will help ensure that the State gets at least 500 cusecs of water before Pongal. The flow will soon be increased to 1,000 cusecs by the end of this month, said Emaraj. “Currently, 2,500 cusecs of water has been released from Kandaleru and it will reach the city through the new canal,” he said.

The discharge of water from Kandaleru reservoir had been irregular since mid-April due to repair works in a portion of Kandaleru Poondi canal in Ubbalamadugu in AP.

Water supply was intermittent and had to be stopped on many occasions. The repair work was finished last month but the old canal had to be linked with the new structure for the supply to resume. The flow from Kandaleru was stopped more than two weeks ago.

The resumed discharged would come as a major relief for Metro Water which is struggling to meet the demands. Currently, there is only 3.3 tmc feet of water in the four reservoirs that supply water to the city.

Due to the failure of monsoon, Metro Water has already curtailed the supply of water from 835 MLD to 575 MLD of water.