At the reservoirs that supply water to the city, there’s enough water for 7 months.
Enough water: Water levels at the two major reservoirs at Red Hills and Chembarambakkam are 81.1% and 78.4%, respectively. An official said that’d be enough for piped water supply to Chennai for the next seven months. Also, once the northeast monsoon arrives, rainwater will drain into the Poondi reservoir.
- As of Wednesday, Poondi reservoir had 669 million cubic feet (mcft) of water. Cholavaram had 164, and Red Hills with 2,678. In total, all the reservoirs have about 8,000 mcft of water.
- Last year, discharge from the Poondi reservoir was 12 tmc. It drained into the sea since there were no storage facilities downstream.
More on Poondi: The reservoir won’t receive water from the Kandaleru reservoir in Andhra Pradesh until after the northeast monsoon. Officials in the neighbouring state were asked not to release water since they had to build two sluice gates at Poondi through which the hydrology department used to draw water. The old gates were destroyed seven years ago.