The Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD Board) of Tamil Nadu is a statutory body that was formed by the Tamil Nadu Government. This TWAD Board was set up for the dual purpose. The first purpose was to provide water supply facilities and the other task was to provide the sewerage facilities for the entire state of Tamil Nadu. These facilities are not extended in the Chennai Metropolitan Area. The TWAD Board was set up on 14 April in the year 1971.
All the activities of the TWAD Board are guided and monitored. This task is done by the Board of Directors at senior level that works as administrators for the Government of Tamil Nadu. The TWAD Board is headed by the IAS officer that acts as the Managing Director. There are four chief regional engineers of TWAD who are working for the northern region, Eastern Region, Western Region and Southern Region from Vellore, Thanjavur, Coimbatore, and Madurai Respectively for their separate zones.
TWAD performs many activities like investigation, formulization and execution of the water supply and the sewerage schemes. Besides this it also carries out the task of implementing Water supply schemes d in rural as well as urban areas, also and sewerage schemes in urban areas only. TWAD Board also shares the responsibility of maintaining a large number of water supply schemes.
TWAD comprises of about more than 7500 workforce among which it has around 1500 qualified engineers and around 6000 technical and other managerial personnel. At the places of source creation TWAD performs the task of creating rigs by drilling. At present there are around 21 drilling rigs that are engaged in the source creation works. It also has 6 hydro fracturing units that can be used to enhance the yield of ground water from the bore well sources.
TWAD has its Training Centers at Chennai, Trichy, Madurai, and Coimbatore. Besides this, it also has Well-developed Hydro geological Wing along with the state-of-the-art equipments.
There is a vast Network of laboratories hat are established in every district. It also has a State level laboratory at Chennai that ensures constant surveillance for water quality. It makes use of Computer aided design facility. It has a HRD Cell that imparts training for the engineers and other staff workers.