Almost two months after starting its maiden run to bring water from Jolarpettai to a parched Chennai, the water train will make its final journey to the capital city on Tuesday.
As TNM had reported earlier, the train’s operations will be stopped by Tuesday night since the groundwater table in the city has been replenished due to continuous rains over the past few days and also because the city has started receiving water from Krishna river.
The train brought around 2.75 million litres of water from Jolarpettai in every trip. The scheme entailed tapping the excess water from the Mettur drinking water supply project in Vellore district and was announced at an outlay of Rs 65 crore by the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Edappadi K Palaniswami in June, when the water crisis in Chennai city was at its worst.
The train started its service on July 12. Though the initial plan of Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) was to arrange four rakes of wagons to bring 11 million litres of water per day to Chennai, they could arrange only one rake. The 50-wagon train started from Jolarpettai at 7 pm every day and reached Chennai by midnight, when the water was pumped to the Kilpauk water treatment plant and then supplied to central Chennai. The second rake started operating from Jolarpettai in the third week of July.
Andhra Pradesh released water from a brimming Krishna river on September 25 under the Telugu Ganga project, which reached Poondi reservoir by September 30. As on October 5, the water level at Poondi reservoir stood at 783 mcft against its full capacity of 3231 mcft. The levels at Redhills, Cholavaram and Chembarambakkam reservoirs stood at 50 mcft, 54 mcft and 12 mcft respectively. The overall water stored in the four reservoirs in Chennai’s periphery stood at almost 900 mcft as on October 5.