Chennai today is facing the predicament of “simply not enough”. In fact, this coastal metropolis’ seven million people have never enjoyed the standard water supply of 150-200 litres per capita per day (lpcd) the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) prescribed in 1998.
Living in a state of perpetual deficiency is not new to Chennai. The city has no perennial water source and when the rains fail it can be traumatic for a large section of the citizenry that is used to piped water supply from the city corporation. For purposes other than drinking, the people survive solely on groundwater. Piped water supply, however, is between 50 and 70 lpcd even at the best of times.
The rains have failed for two years consecutively, and the city now gets a supply of around 525 million litres per day (mld) against the normal supply of 830 mld. (The prescribed supply should be 1,584 mld.) Incidentally, that is the quantum Cape Town in South Africa distributed to its four million people during the “Day Zero” alert not long ago. Even a 13.5 per cent dip in the storage in its water sources made Cape Town declare an emergency.
In Chennai, the grim reality is that storage in the four major freshwater reservoirs that supply water to the city has plummeted to an all-time low of 27 million cubic feet (mcft) (on June 18) against the combined total capacity of 11,257 mcft, or about 0.24 per cent. The city, the sixth largest in India and 30th on the list of most populous urban agglomerations in the world (U.N. Mega Cities Report, 2016), is fast running dry. A report by the NITI Aayog released last year says that 21 cities, including Chennai, will run out of groundwater by 2020. A staggering 600 million people will face high to extreme water stress, it warns.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami called the crisis “an exaggerated” one and promptly drew all-round criticism. He announced a contingency amount of Rs.200 crore to mitigate the problem on a war footing. After rejecting the Kerala government’s offer of 2 million litres by rail as “too little for the crisis”, he asked his officials to source water from Jolarpet town in Vellore district, some 140 kilometres from Chennai, by train.
The north-east monsoon, which supplies most of the city’s water requirements, failed for two consecutive years. The Director of Regional Meteorological Centre, Chennai, P. Balachandran, told Frontline that the rainfall deficit in Chennai in 2018 was steep. The total annual rainfall was 754.1 mm against the normal level of 1,324.2 mm, a deficit of 570.1 mm and a departure percentage of minus 43. Both the monsoons, south-west and north-east, were in deficit in 2018.
The uncertainty over water from the Cauvery river reaching the Veeranam tank, which supplies 25 per cent of Chennai’s water needs, and the poor realisation of Krishna river water from Andhra Pradesh at the Poondi reservoir, another major water source for the city, are not unexpected. Karnataka has stubbornly refused to give Tamil Nadu’s June share of 9.19 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft), and Andhra Pradesh cites drought as a reason for its inability to share Krishna water.
Operational inefficiency
Experts say that two major factors—groundwater depletion because of water sources drying up and a tardy distribution system by an apathetic state—have escalated the ever-prevalent shortage into a full-blown water crisis. Although there are many reasons—climate change, monsoon failure, population explosion and rampant urbanisation—for groundwater depletion, the primary cause is the failure of the State government to manage and maintain irrigation systems and waterbodies. Hydrological experts call it “operational inefficiency”.
Ironically, the government has spent crores of rupees over the last decade to supply water and assist agriculture. “It is the lack of vision and the absence of a holistic approach to overhaul the water management system in the State that have led to the crisis,” says the water expert Prof. S. Janakarajan (see box). But even rainwater harvesting (RWH), a pet project of former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa introduced in 2003 after a similar spell of water stress, is no longer mandatory. RWH structures were constructed in 8.28 lakh houses, 2,700 government buildings, and 27,600 commercial complexes, educational buildings and places of worship then. “The government has plans to bring it back in a big way. We are reviving the defunct structures and creating fresh ones wherever water can be harnessed,” says an official.
The Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB), which takes care of the water supply in the city’s 34,173 streets in 200 wards, could distribute only 830 mld of water even during “non-crisis” periods, as against the mandated requirement of 1,584 mld. The Indian standard water requirement, finalised and adopted by the BIS, says that the lower income group (LIG) and economically weaker sections (EWS) require 135 lpcd, and for a population above 100,000, it is 150 to 200 lpcd. For citizens of Chennai, it still remains a dream.
Long dry spell
For the first time in three decades, the city went without a drop of rain for nearly 200 days at a stretch (as on June 23), leading to a shrinking of storage and triggering panic. It, however, rained heavily on June 25/26, breaking the dry spell. Many companies, particularly in the IT sector, have asked their employees to work from home. Educational institutions function for fewer hours than usual. Even commercial establishments and eateries struggle to stay open. Vital establishments such as hospitals are allowed to have normal water supply.
The increasing cost of water has become a huge drain on the purses of those who live in gated communities and high-rises and depend on private suppliers. Street taps remain crowded even at odd hours, with women, men and children struggling to fill a pot of water, which costs Rs.10 in many areas. A major chunk of the suburban population, including about 13 lakh IT employees and their families, depends on private tankers, which supply about 20,000 loads of 12,000 to 24,000 litres of water every day. The water, sourced from irrigation wells in the villages surrounding the city, fetches fancy prices. Around 20 million litres of packaged drinking water is sold in the city daily. The blame for this state of affairs falls squarely on the State government. The political instability in the State has seen priorities shifting and becoming more party-centric than people-specific.
“It is both a political and an administrative failure. The inability of the present political leadership and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy have accentuated the crisis. They, it seems, have made mistakes, believing that the no-rain spell would be a short-term one,” said a city-based environmentalist who requested anonymity. He and other volunteers are engaged in desilting tanks in the city.
S.P. Velumani, Municipal Administration and Water Supply Minister, while participating in a review meeting on water supply on June 17, called the cries for water as mere “scare” created by political adversaries. He said that the State government had allotted Rs.625 crore to augment water sources and for the supply of water through tanker lorries. Chennai Metro Water, he said, would maintain the present supply of 525 mld until November.
He detailed the various water augmentation and irrigation projects that were being taken up in Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu at a huge cost, which was reported in detail in the media. Projects to the tune of Rs.15,838 crore were being implemented across the State in the past three years to upgrade the infrastructure. Works costing Rs.2,638 crore, he said, were being undertaken in Chennai city alone, while projects worth Rs.5,346 crore were being undertaken in the rest of Tamil Nadu. He claimed that 18 major water supply projects had been undertaken at a cost of Rs.6,496 crore.
If he is to be believed, the State should no longer have a water shortage problem. The overhauling of various irrigation structures and water sources at such a great cost should have ensured this. “When you take up projects below the soil and for water, no one would realise the outcome until a crisis of current magnitude strikes. These works have not mitigated the critical depletion of groundwater,” said the environmentalist.
The State government has failed to monitor and standardise hundreds of waterbodies, many of which once held copious surface water round the year, which the city depended on. In fact, Chennai and its two suburban districts of Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur are known as the “cluster of lake districts”. Unfortunately, haphazard urbanisation, population explosion and administrative indifference have destroyed most ofl the lakes.
A recent report in The Hindu quoting L. Elango, vice president of the Indian Association of Hydrologists (Indian Chapter), says that waterbodies in the city and its suburbs have shrunk from 12.6 sq km in 1893 to about 3.2 sq km in 2017 because of urbanisation. A study done by the Department of Geology, Anna University, says the volume of surface water has also dipped from 1,335 mcft in 1893 to 339 mcft in 2017.
The systematic destruction of these tanks and lakes has a crucial bearing on the groundwater level. Between 80 and 85 per cent of the current requirement of water is being drawn from borewells. Metro Water supplies potable water for an hour or so through pipes every alternate day, which is grossly inadequate. As of now, it employs 900 water tankers of 9,000- and 12,000-litre capacities. They criss-cross the city round the clock, doing 9,100 trips a day to cater to a significant chunk of the city’s population.
But supply through tankers is not without its problems. “Though we are asked to book water online in advance, we have to wait for at least a fortnight to get a tanker of 9,000 litres while VVIPs and other influential persons are ensured regular supply,” says Rathnam, a resident in Kilpauk. Many consumers across the city accuse Metro Water of irregular water supply. “Some key areas, such as Greenways Road where Ministers live, have been prioritised. At the moment, we can distribute 30 to 40 litres a person a day. We should learn to live with that amount of water for another three months, or till the monsoon arrives,” says a senior officer.
A rough estimate says that the three districts of Chennai, Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram had once commanded a combined total of 6,000-odd reservoirs, tanks, lakes and ponds to keep recharging the groundwater on a sustainable basis. Today, hardly half of them survive. Chennai city alone has lost a hundred such waterbodies and its water carrying channels. Water harnessed from these lakes and tanks was estimated to be 80,000 mcft.
In Tamil Nadu, 95 per cent of the surface water has been utilised. “The State now has 37 lakh borewells,” said an Executive Engineer of the Public Works Department (PWD). Chennai’s acute groundwater depletion has left a debilitating scar on its hydrology system. The seawater ingress deep inland escalates the problems. A recent groundwater resource assessment report of the Ground Water Division, State PWD, which maintains and manages major and medium irrigation and hydrological systems, paints a grim picture of the groundwater profile and points out that 175 out of the 385 blocks have been over-exploited. The critical blocks constitute 45.45 per cent. The safe blocks number 145.
Another report of the Ground Water Division says that the groundwater level in 22 districts in Tamil Nadu, including Chennai’s neighbouring districts (data for Chennai city are not available), have been recording a significant fall. The average groundwater level status report for May 2019 says that Tiruvallur has recorded a fall of 0.68 metres below ground level, from 5.79 m in 2018 to 6.47 m in 2019. Kancheepuram recorded a fall of 1.88 m, from 4.01 m in 2018 to 5.89 m in 2019. It has been a steady decline in the water table after May 2011, during which Tiruvallur recorded a rise of 1.68 m and Kancheepuram 0.27 m.
Augmenting groundwater
Realising the urgent need to augment groundwater sources, the PWD had chalked up a master plan to recharge groundwater and to construct check dams, percolation ponds and recharge tube wells; to build RWH structures for aquifer activation; and to desilt tanks and lakes over a period of time. The estimated cost of the plan, to be rolled out in three phases in 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-2011, was Rs.550 crore. It got the plan sanctioned in 2008 itself.
As for the projects that are said to have been executed so far, the Agricultural Engineering Department has constructed 4,753 check dams, 10,996 percolation ponds and 12,564 farm ponds since 1984 and the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD), which is in charge of drinking water supply, has constructed 3,666 check dams since 2001. The Forest Department has chipped in with 25,600 check dams and 2,540 percolation ponds, helping groundwater register a substantial increase in local areas. Such a master plan was essential to augment the water level in critical blocks and prevent the semi-critical blocks becoming critical, says a senior official in the Water Resource Organisation (WRO) of the PWD.
The WRO took up a special scheme to augment the water supply in Chennai in 2011-12. The formation of a new reservoir near Kannankottai and Thiruvaikandigai villages for storage of one tmc ft was done at a cost of Rs.330 crore. An additional Rs.130 crore was sanctioned for creating extra water storage capacity in the four tanks of Cholavaram, Porur, Nemam and Aynambakkam. The works included desilting, strengthening of bunds, and building of regulators and weirs. A proposal to restore and rejuvenate the waterbodies in Ambattur, Korattur and Madhavaram around Chennai for groundwater replenishment is to be taken up at a cost of Rs.106.49 crore. However, three rivers and a canal in the city—the Cooum, the Adayar, the Kosasthalaiyar and the Buckingham canal—remain cesspools even after spending crores of rupees.
The stakeholders are happy that the government is spending a huge sum on projects relating to water. But they say that the benefits from the projects should have been realised by now. “We have to suffer perpetual water stress, whether it rains or not. Agriculture is suffering. The entire irrigation system is leaking. After the floods in 2015, the city is reeling under one calamity or the other,” says a trader in T. Nagar, one of the worst-hit pockets. “Where will you store the excess rainwater that drains into the sea?” asked Janakarajan.
The State government, however, chooses to maintain a stony silence on these questions and blames monsoon failure whenever a crisis strikes. Metro Water, in its affidavit before the Madras High Court on June 17, which came down heavily on the State government on the water scarcity, maintained that deficit rainfall from 2017 and the consequent depletion in the storage capacity of reservoirs was the reason for the short supply in the city.
Existing water sources
The four fresh water reservoirs in the city—Red Hills, Cholavaram, Poondi and Chembarambakkam—have a combined storage of 11,257 mcft. The Red Hills reservoir (3,300 mcft) and Cholavaram (1,081 mcft) had zero storage as on June 16. The Chembarambakkam reservoir, which has a capacity of 3,645 mcft, had a mere one mcft while the Poondi reservoir (3,231 mcft) had 26 mcft.
A PWD officer says that if the four reservoirs were desilted, an additional combined storage of 500 mcft of water could be obtained. An additional supply of 95 mld is ensured from irrigation wells located in the suburban Tamaraipakkam, Minjur and Poondi villages and borewells supply another 35 mld. The Retteri lake near Ambattur augments the supply with 10 mld. Stone quarries yield an additional 30 mld.
Veeranam project
The New Veeranam project supplies 180 mld from the Veeranam lake, some 235 km away and near the Neyveli Lignite Corporation aquifer. As on June 16, Veeranam had a storge of 569 mcft against a capacity of 1,465 mcft. It was Jayalalithaa who commissioned the project as an additional source for the city in 2004. The lake water is treated at the Vadakuthu water treatment plant before getting pumped to the Chennai Porur water distribution station. In fact, water can be pumped to Chennai only when the reservoir retains a minimum water level of 39 ft.
Krishna water
Andhra Pradesh has not released the stipulated quantum of Krishna water from the Kandaleru reservoir for this year. The agreement between the two governments guarantees 12 tmc ft of water in two spells every year. Andhra Pradesh should have released 4 tmc ft between January and April out of which only 1.8 tmc ft has been released so far. The rest should be given between July and October. In fact, Tamil Nadu has been receiving less than its share from Andhra Pradesh for a decade or so barring the receipt of 8.2 tmc ft in 2011-12.
Desalination Plant
The first seawater desalination plant was commissioned in July 2010 at Minjur with a capacity of 100 mld. The second plant of 100 mld was commissioned at Nemmeli in February 2013. The foundation stone for the third plant, near the Nemmeli plant, with a capacity of 150 mld was laid recently. A fourth plant will be constructed in Perur with a capacity of 400 mld. The latter two projects will cost the exchequer Rs.5,446 crore since these plants are expensive and energy-intensive.
A drought-like situation prevails elsewhere in the State. The TWAD Board operates 556 comprehensive water supply schemes in eight municipal corporations, 67 municipalities, 347 town panchayats and 48,948 village panchayats other than Chennai, covering 4.23 crore consumers and 2,146 mld of water. This drought situation in the districts, according to C. Vaiyapuri, founder-president of the United Farmers Association, is the result of a combination of free electricity connections and unchecked proliferation of borewells, leading to heavy drawal of groundwater. “Farmers have started raising water-intensive crops in rain-fed lands too,” he says.
Chennai has been surviving on a fragile line that separates shortage from crisis. Now, the shortage is real. It is so bad that a few mosques in the city used sand instead of water for “wudu”, the cleaning ritual during prayers, during the holy month of Ramzan.
People have realised that they are living in hard times. The State government has been failing them repeatedly. And everyone in Chennai today is praying for rains.
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