For the second day, the Water Resources Department released the same amount of surplus water from the major city reservoirs as they continued to get good inflow on Monday.
Spread over 25.51 sq.km., the Chembarambakkam reservoir, one of the major drinking water sources of the city now has a storage of 2,934 million cubic feet against its capacity of 3,645 mcft. As the inflow remained at 610 cubic feet per second around noon, WRD discharged nearly 2,000 cusecs of surplus water into the Adyar river at 6 p.m. on Monday.
Water Resources Minister Durai Murugan inspected the waterbody and the sluice gates along with Minister for Rural Industries T.M.Anbarasan on Monday.
Officials of the WRD said the Adyar river carried a flow of 5,000-6,000 cusecs now. “We can safely discharge about 40,000 cusecs into the river. Adyar is also carrying nearly 2,500 cusecs of excess water from Adhanur tank, apart from the water released from Chembarambakkam reservoir,” said an official.
Similarly, nearly 4,040 cusecs of water is being let out from Poondi reservoir as it continues to receive heavy inflow from catchment areas and the dam in Andhra Pradesh. In reservoirs at Red Hills and Cholavaram too, the water release is being maintained at 2,000 cusecs and 1,200 cusecs respectively.
Officials said as more inflow is expected to reach the waterbodies in the coming days, about 20% more water, out of what is received as inflow, is being released into the surplus courses and rivers.
The levels in reservoirs are monitored and measured every few hours. The measured discharge would help take in additional quantity of water in the reservoirs during heavy rain spells and alleviate inundation.
Waterbodies filling up
Many large waterbodies like the ones in Madurantakam and Uthiramerur have filled up. Of the 381 tanks in Kancheepuram district, nearly 138 have reached their full capacity. The Kancheepuram district administration issued flood warning for villages, including Kattupakkam and Bharathipuram, as surplus water was released from Uthiramerur tank.
