With the Cauvery river in spate, Mettur dam, the primary storage point of Tamil Nadu, on Sunday recorded an inflow of 1.3 lakh cubic feet per second (cusecs).
The water gauging site in Billigundlu, on the Karnataka and Tamil Nadu border, also registered a similar inflow.
At 4 p.m. on Sunday, the inflow at Mettur was 1 lakh cusecs. This was for the first time that the dam recorded the six-digit figure of inflow during the current water season.
According to information reaching here, the Karnataka authorities, at 8 p.m., let out 70,000 cusecs from the Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) and 16,000 cusecs from the Kabini dams. Four hours earlier, 30,000 cusecs was released from the latter with the outflow from the former remaining at 70,000 cusecs. The inflow into the KRS was 97,000 cusecs and to the Kabini, 30,000 cusecs.
On Sunday night, Mettur dam’s water level stood at 81.1 ft (full level is 120 ft) and the storage was 43.061 thousand million cubic feet (93.47 tmc ft). An outflow of 1,000 cusecs was being maintained from the dam.
As regards the State’s second largest dam, Bhavanisagar, the water level at 6 p.m. stood at 99.87 ft, a bare six feet below the full level of 105 ft.
The storage was 28,625 tmc ft against the full storage of 32.8 tmc ft. The reservoir received an inflow of 7,517 cusecs and the discharge was 1,000 cusecs.
Likewise, the Mullaperiyar dam, whose catchment areas in Kerala had received heavy rainfall last week, registered an inflow of 5,240 cusecs this evening. The water level of the dam stood at 135.85 ft against the permissible level of 142 ft. The reservoir’s storage was 6.075 tmc ft. The discharge was of the order of 2,010 cusecs.
Warning issued
A senior Public Works Department (PWD) official said that a warning has already been issued urging people of Kerala and Tamil Nadu living along the river banks to move to safer areas, due to higher discharge of water from the dam.
In the Vaigai dam, the water level increased to 37.66 feet (71 feet) at 6 p.m. on Sunday. PWD officials said that there was an average inflow of 1,500 cusecs. The total storage in the dam was 774 mcft.
(With inputs from reporters in Madurai and Salem)
