Water crisis:Chennai water board looking at ‘out-of-the earth’ options

PTI, Jul 23, 2019, 8:07 PM IST

Chennai: As Chennai grapples with the water crisis, the city metropolitan water supply and sewerage board might probably be looking at out-of-the-earth options, literally!

The Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) board congratulated ISRO after its Chandrayaan-2 success and sought information from the space agency about water resources on the lunar surface.

“Congrats @isro for #Chandrayaan2theMoon. We are in the process of augmenting new water resources for our city. If you find any water on the Moon, you know whom to call first,” the Metro Water tweeted.

A team handling social media for the board told PTI that the move was part of efforts to engage with public.

“We want to break barriers and get in touch with people of Chennai in a lively manner, instead of issuing mechanical replies and statements,” a member of the team said.

Chennai Metro Water has been desperately tapping water resources all across Chennai.

On Tuesday, Metro Water officials received a second rake comprising 50 wagons of water from Jolarpettai in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore district, around 200 kms from the city.

The city had received the first rake containing 50 wagons, each carrying 50,000 litres of water, on July 12.

From both the trains, Chennai would receive around 5.5 MLD of water, metro water officials said, adding two more such rakes have been sought from Southern Railway to supply about 10 MLD as promised by the State government.