The water level in the Krishnaraja Sagar (KRS) in Mandya district was hovering at 83.9 feet on Friday, which is the lowest for August since 2002.
The full-reservoir level (FRL) is 124.8 ft. Unprecedented drought in 2002 had led to poor inflow and the reservoir level was around 74.7 ft on August 2, 2002, according to officials in Cauvery Neeravari Nigama Ltd.
A similar situation is staring at the authorities this year owing to scanty rainfall in the catchment area of the Cauvery in Kodagu. The cumulative rainfall from June 1 to August 2 in Kodagu is 838 mm, which is 47% below normal.
The inflow into the reservoir on Friday was at the rate of 6,512 cusecs while the outflow was at 9,933 cusecs, according to Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC).
Of this, water at the rate of 2,911 cusescs was being discharged into the canals while the discharge into the river was pegged at 7,022 cusecs.
Farmers in Mandya staged a protest and blocked the Bengaluru–Mysuru highway for sometime condemning the decision of the authorities to step up the discharge to Tamil Nadu while the inflow was reducing. Farmers, led by KRRS taluk unit president Krishne Gowda, said water should be impounded at the KRS to improve the storage level, and criticised the government for releasing water into the river.
The combined storage in the four major reservoirs of the Cauvery basin in Karnataka as on Friday was 35.09 tmcft against the total capacity of nearly 104 tmcft.
This is in contrast to the combined storage of 99.7 tmcft that was available during the corresponding period last year (August 2, 2018) owing to copious rainfall in the catchment area.
The cumulative discharge from the KRS since June 1 till date is nearly 11 tmcft while that from the Kabini reservoir in the same period is around 7.6 tmcft.
Last year nearly 173.5 tmcft of water was released from the two reservoirs from June 1 to August 10. While 75 tmcft of water was released from the KRS, 98.5 tmcft of water was released from the Kabini.
