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Tamil Nadu Chief Minister O Panneerselvam has urged his Andhra Pradesh counterpart, N Chandrababu Naidu, to urgently intervene for the release of Krishna water to meet the drinking water supply of Chennai, which is facing an acute shortage in reservoirs.
Tamil Nadu and Chennai city are primarily dependent on North-East monsoon for bulk of the rainfall. In 2016, the North-East monsoon has been highly deficient in the State with rainfall in Chennai deficient by nearly 57 per cent.
Water level in Chennai’s drinking water reservoirs is very low and the meagre storage currently available needs to be augmented to meet the drinking water supply requirements of the city over the next few months.
“We depend on the release of Krishna water from Kandaleru Reservoir to partly tide over drinking water supply to Chennai till July. Chennai is critically dependent on release of Krishna water to manage the difficult situation in which we find ourselves this year,” Paneerselvam said in the letter to Chandrababu Naidu.
“I am given to understand that as on January 5, Kandaleru Reservoir has a storage of 13.53 TMC ft. Therefore, Andhra Pradesh appears to be in a position to release water from Kandaleru Reservoir for Chennai. I request you to kindly instruct the officials to ensure the immediate release of the agreed quantum of water from Kandaleru Reservoir for being realised at the Tamil Nadu border,” he said in the letter.
As per the Inter-State Agreement dated April 18, 1983 signed between the Governments of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, an annual quantum of 12 TMC ft (excluding evaporation loss) shall be realised at the Tamil Nadu border through the release of water from Kandaleru Reservoir to meet the drinking water needs of Chennai in two spells.
Normally, 8 TMC ft. of water is to be supplied between July and October and another 4 TMC ft from January to April. However, a quantum of only 0.99 TMC ft. has been realised at the Tamil Nadu border in the period from October to December, 2016, the release said.
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