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Now, Chennai gets 180 MLD more drinking water than the previous year
Posted on: 15/Dec/2020 9:18:43 AM
The lakes in the Chennai city are brimming due to the heavy rains. This has led to water storage crossing 10,000 mcft after 10 long years. The water deprived Chennai city is now getting 180 MLD more drinking water that it received in the previous year in the same time period.
On Monday, 14th December 2020, the water manager supplied 830.60 MLD of drinking water. This has been confirmed by data from the CMWSSB or metro water. It must be recalled that on the same day (14th December) in the year 2019, CMWSSB supplied just 650.56 MLD of drinking water (180 million litres less).
Out of total 830.60 MLD of drinking water supplied by the metro water, 512.57 MLD water was drawn from Red Hills, Chembarambakkam and Poondi lakes. Chembarambakkam Lake got filled up first due to the rains and due to this reason 221 MLD of water was drawn from here out of the total 512.57 MLD. Point is that the authorities have been forced to release the water from Chembarambakkam.
Lakes in Chennai supplied only 276.83 MLD of water in 2019 and it includes 56 MLD from Chembarambakkam. The daily production of drinking water at Nemmeli desalination plant was cut down by about 50percent as more water was drawn from the lakes for distribution. On Monday, metro water drew just 50.63 MLD of water from this desalination plant. The total capacity of this plant is 100MLD.
Initially, metro water was supplying 650 MLD of water and later on it increased the supply to 730 MLD. After the rains, the metro water department increased the water supply to 830 MLD.
Important piece of information is that at present the 5 lakes that supply drinking water to Chennai city have a combined storage of 10315 mcft. This accounts for 87.73percent storage when compared to the total capacity of the lakes. The metro water department does not have any need to draw water from Sholavaram and Thervoy Kandigai lakes now. As per an official belonging to the metro water department, Chennai needs around 1 TMC drinking water and the lakes have got storage of 10 TMC.
He was of the view that the water that is available would be enough and it would last till the end of the year. It is known that CMWSSB or metro water was established in the year 1978 and it provides drinking water to Chennai and nearby places.
