Tamil Nadu Government seek out Krishna water from AP

Chennai:Tamil Nadu government today urged AP to confirm the immediate release of Krishna water to meet the drinking water needs of the city.

State CM O Panneerselvam in his letter to his AP counterpart Chandrababu Naidu, underlined the deficient North East monsoon and meagre storage in city reservoirs, and sought his personal intervention for the immediate release of Krishna water from Kandaleru reservoir.

In Chennai’s reservoirs, the water level was very low and the “meagre storage” currently available needs to be augmented to meet drinking water supply requirements of the city over the next few months, Panneerselvam said. “Therefore, we depend on the release of Krishna water from the Kandaleru reservoir to partly tide over the drinking water supply to Chennai till July, 2017. Chennai city is critically dependent on the release of Krishna water, in order to manage the difficult situation in which we find ourselves this year,” he said.

As per an Inter-State agreement reached in April 1983, an annual quantum of 12 TMC ft. shall be realised at the Tamil Nadu border, by release of water from Kandaleru Reservoir to meet the drinking water needs of Chennai City, Panneerselvam noted.

8 TMC ft. of water has to be supplied between July and October and another 4 TMC ft. from January to April. However, a quantum of only 0.99 TMC ft. has been realised at the Tamil Nadu border in the period from October to December, 2016, the Chief Minister said in the letter.