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Water train service from jolarpet to Chennai now wound up
Posted on: 09/Oct/2019 10:04:38 AM
The city of Chennai faced a severe water crisis from April to the middle of August month due to the absence of rains. To ease this issue water was transported from Jolarpet to Chennai for the last 3 months. It is now brought out that after transporting 437.25 million liters of water the water train service on Tuesday was wound up. This water train service also made 2 trips in a day is well known.
It has been mentioned by some officials belonging to the MWD that the water train services have been stopped because Krishna water has arrived and it has resulted in slow filling up of Poondi reservoir. They further added that MWD has been paying an amount of Rs 8.6 lakhs per train to carry water from Jolarpet to Chennai and Rs 7.2lakh in a day often. Finally, they revealed that Chennai received good rains in the last two months and this resulted in the demand for water supply to come down. The bore wells got recharged by the rains after they remained dry in summertime.
It must be taken into account that water from Jolarpet was important for MWD to sustain to the tune of 500 million liters every day. It was on the 12th of July 2019 operation of water special trains started and on that day the first trainload from Jolarpet reached ICF marshaling yard near Villivakkam railway station around noon. The officials of MWD spoke about how the water train service has made as many as 159 trips till now.
Information is 2 trains comprising 50 tanker wagons brought 2.75 million liters of water per trip. It is important to note that drinking water loaded on the trains at Jolarpet was sourced by the TN government from the Vellore combined water supply scheme or CWSS that serves Vellore corporation and other municipalities. This scheme of water from the Mettur dam is known.
A pumping station was set up at Mettusakkarakuppam ground level water sump or GLWS at a cost of Rs 8.5 crores to divert CWSS water. This was done to bring water from jolarpet railway station to fill the wagons of Chennai.
