The realisation of water in River Cauvery at Mettur dam dipped to a paltry 484 cusecs on Friday morning, leading to a serious concern among the entire farming community of the State and the official machinery alike.
On October 18, the Supreme Court had directed the Karnataka government to keep releasing 2,000 cusecs of water every day till further orders, which the Karnataka Government has preferred to defy, citing poor storage in the State’s reservoirs.
The apex court’s direction followed a report submitted by the high-level technical committee constituted by it to assess the ground realities in the Cauvery basin.
With poor realisation in the last one week, the water level at the Mettur dam went down to 58.78 feet on Friday, against the full level of 120 feet. The storage level was 23.786 tmc against the dam’s full capacity of 93.47 tmc. The dam received 1,642 cusecs on Wednesday (October 19) and 1,017 cusecs on Thursday (October 20).
About 12,000 cusecs are being discharged from the dam since the sluices of the Stanley Reservoir in Mettur were opened on September 20 for the samba crop season. On three days (October 13 to 15), the discharge was increased to 18,000 cusecs to enable the water to reach the tail-end areas. The customary water release period is from June 12 to January 28 (230 days) for kuruvai, samba and thaladi crops.
Will last only for 20 days
With the water level depleting at the rate of one foot a day, the available quantity is expected to last only for the next 20 days for the ongoing samba season, according to Public Works Department sources here. The apprehension of farmers is that the release of water for just 50 days will in no way help in saving the samba crop.
P. R. Pandian, president of the All Farmers Associations Organisation Committee, who expressed concerns in this regard, demanded immediate release of 100 tmc of water from Karnataka reservoirs for completing the samba cultivation. The Karnataka Government, which released about 15,000 cusecs of water from Krishnaraja Sagar and Kabini reservoirs continuously for 10 days from September 6, later closed the shutters. Following this, the Mettur dam managed to realise between 600 cusecs to 800 cusecs alone for about 10 days by September end, leading to a panic situation.
PWD sources said that usually, water is released from the dam till the dam level reached 30 feet mark.
The storage of water till 30 feet mark was for meeting the drinking water needs of about 25 districts in the State.
The sources said that water was being discharged from the dam even when the level reached below the 30-feet mark on at least three occasions in the last three decades. In 1986, water was released from the dam till the level reached 11 feet.
