The 2019 Chennai water crisis was a water crisis occurring in India, most notably in the coastal city of Chennai in Tamil Nadu. On 19 June 2019, Chennai city officials declared that "Day Zero", or the day when almost no water is left, had been reached, as all the four main reservoirs supplying water to the city had run dry. Two years of deficient monsoon rainfall, particularly in late 2017 and throughout much of 2018 had led to this crisis. Because tap water has stopped running, some families have been relying on alternative water sources such as distant, unreliable public water pumps, and costly private water tankers. Background Chennai is a city of over 11 million people, around the size of New York City, and is the fourth largest city in India. The city is an automotive engineering hub and contains many automotive factories that are built around the reservoirs of the city. Mismanagement of the city’s water resources and weak monsoons for the last four years reduced the city’s reservoirs to 0.1% of normal capacity in June 2019. Water became a valuable resource in Chennai and experienced exploitation as wealthier residents paid to dig deep bore wells on their land and sold water to other residents or businesses. This practice was allowed by the government and resulted in the groundwater aquifer to be drained dramatically at twice the level of annual recharge. Protests erupted over the Chennai government’s lack of action on the issue as the water was no longer a basic human right in Chennai. The government also faced pressure on their management of the city’s four main reservoirs; Poondi, Cholavaram, Redhills and Chembarambakkam. Factories and infrastructure built in the catchments of these reservoirs were unregulated and therefore much of the rain that fell ended up in the ocean or used in excess by these factories. This further exacerbated the issue and limited the amount of water that entered the reservoirs for public consumption. Monsoon rains in 2019 have been more plentiful than in years past and have raised the reservoir levels to around 30% capacity. Chennai has declared itself water secure because of the recent rains but concern remains about the future of water security in Chennai and many other Indian cities such as Bangalore which have similar regulation issues. An Indian government think tank predicted that 21 Indian cities will be out of groundwater by 2020,