Tamil Nadu faces huge water scarcity

Due to rising temperature, several districts in Tamil Nadu are facing acute water shortage.

According to reports, there has been a 40 per cent cut in the piped water supply in capital Chennai. Several reservoirs across the state have witnessed a decrease in water levels.

"Tamil Nadu is in a very big disaster in terms of water, water resources and planning also. It is facing the worst ever drought in the last few years. There are four major reservoirs which supply water to Chennai having a combined storage of about 11 thousand million cubic (tmc). Other than that there are small reservoirs too. But nothing was done to augment the capacity," said Sundarrajan of NGO Poovulagin Nanbargal.

"Chennai should have got about four tmc of water from Krishna district till April. But we got only 0.8 tmc and the rest is not yet supplied. Similarly, Tamil Nadu should have got 20 tmc of water from Kaveri river in the last four-five months. Kaveri is the drinking water source for at least five crores of Tamil Nadu. It's a very dire situation now," he added.

Sundarrajan stated that this is the time when people across the state take a cue and "work on water conservation and conserve our forests."

In the past few weeks, few places in states like Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh among others have faced issues related to cut in the water supply.