Presently Chennai, the sixth largest city in the country is going through a severe water scarcity and the four reservoirs that supply water to the city are dry, and with groundwater levels having receded, there are altercations at the water supply points. Meanwhile there is international attention on Chennai’s current water shortage, in November-December 2015 the city was in similar lime light due to a devastating flood that cost more than 400 lives and billions in rupees in damages.
Reportedly with all the four reservoirs Chembarambakkam, Poondi, Puzhal and Cholavaram that cater to the 4.64 million population of Chennai city having gone dry, india’s sixth largest city has run out of its drinking water. Furthermore Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami even stated, last week, that the water crisis was being blown out of proportion by the media. When kerala Government offered 20 lakh litres of drinking water to Tamilnadu using rail wagons, the Tamilnadu chief minister’s office neither declined nor accepted the offer, but, claimed that there was “no immediate necessity.”
Moreover Chennai’s problem is that its water availability is mostly from outside the city and not from within the surface of the metropolis. Perhaps the four reservoirs are located upstream of the city and divert the water of the Kosasthalaiyar, Cooum and Adayar rivers and when these three rivers plus Araniyar flow through the city, they have lost their incoming water and carry the waste that fall into them.
