Record rain in five years fills up Chennai reservoirs

 

Chennai’s drinking water requirement is 850 million litres per day (MLD.) The city lakes — Chembarambakkam, Red Hills, Sholavaram and Poondi — received 9,710 MLD of water gushing into them on Monday.

 

A senior official in Chennai Metrowater told Deccan Chronicle that the city’s drinking water storage has nearly doubled in less than 48 hours. On Saturday morning, the combined water storage was 387 million cubic feet and on Monday 8.30 am, the storage stood at 763 million cubic feet.

 

Officials are expecting storage level to breach 1,000 million cubic feet mark on Tuesday considering multiple spells of rain in the catchments post-8.30 am. On an average, over 30 cm of rainfall was received by the catchment areas in the last 24 hours, which is a record of sorts. Especially, Chembarambakkam reservoir is getting inflow of excess of 2,000 cusecs after a gap of five years, said noted weather blogger Pradeep John. 

Director of Rain Centre, Sekhar Ragavan, who works closely with the government on rainwater harvesting, said the widespread rain would increase groundwater table.