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To increase the Cholavaram reservoir capacity, restoration work begins
Posted on: 11/Apr/2019 9:35:34 AM
Cholavaram reservoir has been supplying drinking water to the Chennai city is known to us. The news that has come out now is this reservoir would have more capacity to store water in this year. The important point is after several months of planning the work of de-silting the Cholavaram Lake has started now. Nearly 1200 lorry loads of silt has been removed from this Cholavaram reservoir and this has been confirmed by the WRD or Water Resources Department.
Important information is this de-silting work would enhance the storage capacity of Cholavaram Lake by about 250 mcft. It is now revealed that nearly 38 lakhs cubic meters of silt would be removed from the lake to restore it to its original capacity. The amount that would be spent on this restoration work would be Rs 5.42 crores and it would also include improvement works too.
Amazing information collected is WRD is planning to restore original capacity of all four reservoirs that supplies drinking water to Chennai city. The restoration work would involve removal of silt deposited in the reservoirs. It is important to mention here that WRD expects net revenue of Rs 700 crores from the sale of silt.
In the red Hills as well as in the Chembarambakkam reservoirs storage has touched rock bottom. Point to be noted is for Rs 20 crore project of restoration work in these water reservoirs, WRD is waiting for the approval from the district administration.
An official belonging to WRD explained about how long pending improvement works like repair of shutters, laying roads on the top of the bunds, repairing branch channels and strengthening bunds etc have been going on. In a year or so, the improvement works would be completed and the de-silting work would take up to 5 years of time. The important information is once the work gets over then the reservoirs would have storage capacity of 2000mcft.
It must be noted that the reservoirs now have been able to store just 80% of their capacity of total 11257mcft. The official of WRD was hopeful about the reservoirs providing drinking water to Chennai city for more months and also in avoiding flooding.
