Chennai reservoirs gurgling with water, thanks to northeast monsoon

Currently, the city has around 4 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) of water as against the capacity of 11.257 TMC which officials hope may help the city survive the summer.
Commuters drive through waterlogged Kamarajar Promenade near All India Road in Chennai on Monday. (Photo | Debdatta Mullick/EPS)
Commuters drive through waterlogged Kamarajar Promenade near All India Road in Chennai on Monday. (Photo | Debdatta Mullick/EPS)

CHENNAI: Water managers are heaving a sigh of relief as the copious rains in the last three days are slowly filling up the city's reservoirs that have nearly dried up.

Currently, the city has around 4 thousand million cubic feet (TMC) of water as against the capacity of 11.257 TMC which officials hope may help the city survive the summer.

But then water managers say it is not enough and hope another spell of rain would bring in more water. Poondi and Red Hills reservoir has crossed 1TMC of water.

Poondi has 1229 million cubic feet of water while Red Hills has 1818 million cubic feet of water, as per data of Chennai Metro Water released on Monday.

Interestingly, even Chembarambakkam is nearing the 1TMC mark. It has 913 million cubic feet of water. Last year at this time, almost all the reservoirs have dried up except Red Hills reservoir which had 1.09 TMC of water.

Last year the storage in all the four reservoirs at this time was 1.6TMC of water which was hardly adequate for the summer.

This had put enormous pressure on water managers as the groundwater dried up and every mean was adopted to ensure the city doesn't go thirsty.

This included even getting water from trains.

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