CHENNAI: Moderate rain in the last three days has brought in some water to the drying reservoirs that supply water to the city and some relief to Metrowater, which manages supply to the city.A senior Metrowater official said that after three days of rain Cholavaram saw an inflow of 92 cusecs of water, Poondi received 208 cusecs and Red Hills 617 cusecs over Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.Among the four reservoirs, the one in Chembarampakkam received the lowest inflow of 31 cusecs on one of the days. The Red Hills reservoir also saw and inflow of 90 cusecs of water on Thursday, the officer said.Water levels in reservoirs were fast depleting and were low compared to the corresponding period last year. Poondi reservoir had 1,071 mcft of water last year but the storage level on Thursday was only 386 mcft. Cholavaram has 48 mcft now against 592 mcft at the same time last year. Chembarambakkam has 169 mcft, while it was 1,904 mcft last year.Metrowater is hoping storage will improve further as the Meteorolgy department has forecast more rain from the middle of this month.At present, Metrowater supplies 650 million litres a day (MLD) of piped drinking water to the city and its suburbs. The source for this is 200 MLD from desalination plants; 180 MLD from Veeranam lake; 70 MLD from quarries and lakes and the rest from Red Hills, Poondi and Cholavaram reservoirs.Till recently, neighbouring Andhra Pradesh released water from the Krishna river. The Andhra Pradesh government had promised 2 mcft of water, but supply has been stopped. Metrowater has written to its counterpart in Andhra Pradesh, asking for release of the water promised. “Soon water from Andhra will reach us,” said a Metrowater official.Another Metrowater official said only desalination plants will help in supplying the required water to the expanding city of Chennai in the present situation. Once the two desalination plants proposed, one with a capacity of 400 MLD and another of 150MLD, were set up, the dependency on reservoirs would come down. The water in the reservoirs will become surplus, which can be drawn and supplied to city residents during the dry season, the officer said.

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