WRD plans to complete work on reservoir across Orathur, a tributary of Adyar, ahead of the northeast monsoon

WRD plans to complete work on reservoir across Orathur, a tributary of Adyar, ahead of the northeast monsoon

The work to form a reservoir across Orathur, a tributary of the Adyar, is set to be completed before the upcoming northeast (NE) monsoon. The Water Resources Department (WRD) along with the Revenue Department has started the process for land transfer.

The ₹55.85-crore project will link Orathur and Arambakkam tanks, near Padappai, in Sriperumbudur taluk to create a new reservoir with multiple aims – water conservation, flood mitigation in the downstream areas of the Adyar and also develop a freshwater source to tackle increasing drinking water needs of Chennai.

Nearly 75% of the work has been finished so far. Officials of the WRD said a meeting was held with 72 landowners on Wednesday to initiate the land transfer process to complete the leftover work. “We need a portion of land to build a 420-m connecting bund between the tanks to store floodwater by the next monsoon. The total length of the reservoir bund is nearly 2,815 metre,” an official said.

A total of 38.47 hectares of land, including patta land, have been identified for acquisition. Instead of compensation, officials plan to offer the owners alternative land in places such as Orathur and Korukkanthangal to simplify the process. This process, for the remaining 423 owners, will be carried out in second phase.

The new reservoir will have a capacity to store 0.75 thousand million cubic feet of water. It was envisaged to mitigate inundation in the southern suburbs, such as Varadarajapuram and Mahalakshmi Nagar, and conserve 50%-60% of the floodwater from 10 tanks in the Adyar’s upstream areas.

The surplus water from this reservoir flows into the river near Perungalathur. Officials noted the work to form a 650-m intra-basin channel to route the excess water to a chain of tanks had been completed. The channel can carry about 250 cubic feet per second (cusecs) of water from the new reservoir to Ammanambakkam, Padappai and finally reach the Manimangalam tank. It is from here that water will be drawn to meet the city’s water needs, officials added.

The project, which has been designed along the lines of the Thervoy Kandigai Kannankottai reservoir and work on which started in 2020, had failed to meet its deadline due to the COVID-19 pandemic and a delay in land acquisition.