Incessant rain over the past few days in Kerala and over the western ghats section in Coimbatore district resulted in the breaching of the bund of the Moolathara Dam, under renovation in Chittur Taluk of Palakkad district in Kerala, along the Tamil Nadu border late on Thursday night.
This led to the submerging of a few bridges and crops downstream near Chittur and flooding along Chitturpuzha and Bharathapuzha. This is the fourth time the right bank protection structure of the dam, part of the inter-State Parambikulam Aliyar Project, had breached. The earlier instances were in 1960, 1979, 1992.
The dam was constructed in the year 1963 under the Moolathara Scheme. A total of 45,000 acres of agricultural lands in Chittur taluk and adjoining areas in Kerala were irrigated through two canals from the dam. Under the water-sharing agreement, Kerala gets 7.5 tmc of water from the dam. A maximum of 1.8 lakh cusecs can be released from the total 13 sluices.
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Out of the 13 sluice gates, 11 were damaged. The Kerala government started renovating these and the protection structures at ₹45 crore last year. Work was on in full swing for the past four months. It had been decided that the renovation would be completed in a record 21-month period.
Now, the breach has submerged a bridge, forcing people living in Nedumparai, Muthusamy Pudur, Manacadavu, Ramarpannai, Gopalapuram villages to take a 25-km circuitous route to reach Meenakshipuram.