More areas in core city to get piped supply soon

With the storage in city's major lakes steadily on the rise, Chennai Metrowater on Tuesday announced that the city is not reeling under water crisis anymore.

The city ’is officially out of water shortage’, the water agency tweeted from its official handle.

Senior officials said the major lakes, including those in Poondi and Red Hills, have a storage of 4,000 million cubic feet and continue to receive Krishna water. The daily water supply has also increased from 525 million litres a day to 650 mld now. "We have stopped plying 2 kl and 3 kl capacity vehicles that used to supply water, from this month. The number of lorry trips has come down from nearly 12,000 trips during drought period to 7,700 trips daily now," said an official.

More streets are covered with water supply now and only 3,100 streets still are not supplied with water, the official said. For instance, nearly 691 streets did not have piped water supply in Anna Nagar during drought. Now, it has been reduced to 160 streets. Soon, more areas in core city would get piped supply.

The water agency is shifting to conventional sources of water supply and has stopped drawing from agricultural wells.