Chennai, Oct 15:
Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Wednesday laid the foundation stone for the Rs 3,108.55-crore Ring Main Project aimed at improving drinking water distribution across Greater Chennai Corporation limits.
The project was launched at the Chennai Metro Water pumping station in Sholinganallur. Funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), it is expected to be completed by 2031.
Chennai currently supplies around 1,260 million litres of drinking water per day through 143 distribution stations to meet the daily needs of its 91 lakh residents. The water comes from five reservoirs, including supplies from the Krishna river and Kannankottai-Thervoy Kandigai, and is processed at five water treatment plants and three operational desalination plants.
At present, water is transported through pipelines connecting specific treatment plants to designated areas. A disruption at one source can affect the areas dependent on it, as there is no adequate network to divert water from other sources.
The Ring Main Project seeks to address this problem by interlinking nine facilities, comprising five existing water treatment plants, three operational desalination plants and a 400-million-litre-per-day desalination plant under construction at Perur.
The project includes laying 91.20 km of ring pipelines, 64.20 km of transmission mains and 2.65 km of pumping mains, along with associated civil infrastructure. The integrated network is intended to enable water to be redirected between distribution zones, helping maintain supplies when individual sources face disruptions.
The system will also feature Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) technology, with real-time sensors monitoring water pressure, flow rates and quality. A central control room at the Chennai Water Board headquarters will oversee the network and regulate distribution.
The project is expected to improve the reliability of Chennai’s drinking water supply by allowing the city’s water sources to function as an integrated network rather than as separate systems.