The Hindu 07.05.2013
TWAD starts pumping Siruvani water
Consequent upon the April 28 meeting between the
Ministers and officials of Kerala and Tamil Nadu on sharing water, the
Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board had started pumping water
from the Siruvani Dam for supply to Coimbatore.
The
supply of water was one of the issues in the interstate meeting and
Kerala had permitted TWAD Board to draw up to 100 million litres a day
(mld) from the dead storage. Following the green signal, the Board began
pumping eight mld on Saturday after Chief Engineer M. Nagarajan,
Executive Engineers V.C. Nagarajan and S. Sampathkumar, Assistant
Executive Engineer N. Subramaiam, Assistant Engineer Pattan and Works
Inspector Devanathan visited the spot.
Sources said
that by Monday the Board had increased the supply to 25 mld and in the
next few days it would increase the supply to 40 mld. The Board would
not draw 100 mld as permitted because so much water was not needed to
feed the nine wards in the Coimbatore Corporation that were entirely
dependent on Siruvani water.
The Coimbatore
Corporation had made alternative water supply arrangements for other
wards that were Siruvani dependent in that it had routed water from the
Pilloor supply line.
The sources said that the Board
would supply 40 mld for the next 30 days for the same the Corporation
would pay around Rs. 50 lakh to the Board. The Board had installed two
pump sets now, each of which 3,000 litres per minute. It would increase
the number of pump sets, which would run on diesel.
The
sources pointed out that pumping water from Dam was unprecedented
because since the commissioning of the Siruvani water supply project in
1984 the Board had never used generators to pump water. During the
2003-04 drought the Board had attempted to draw water using generators
but did not obtain permission from the Kerala Government.
