Hyderabad, July 26: The Andhra Pradesh Government has indefinitely postponed the release of water to Chennai city from the Telugu Ganga, with the storage in all reservoirs serving this canal project remaining abysmally low. In view of the gloomy inflows situation, the Liaison Committee of officials from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu governments did not go ahead with a scheduled meeting at Tirupati.
The storage in the three reservoirs remains precariously low this year. The storage in the parent source, Srisailam, today is hardly 36 tmcft, against a full capacity of 308 tmcft.
In Somasila and Kandaleru, it is 1.9 tmcft and 4.5 tmcft respectively, against their full levels of about 78 tmcft and 72 tmcft.
Chennai was allocated 15 tmcft out of the project and, with an estimated 3 tmcft evaporating, the city should get 12 tmcft during a water year.

The supply to Chennai was the highest in 200-2001 at 7 tmcft, when conditions were favourable. It was 0.078 tmcft in 1996, when the project was commissioned, 2.8 tmcft in 1997-98 and 1998-99, 2 tmcft in 1999-2000 and 3.05 tmcft last year.

Bureau Report.