Northeast monsoon is getting active but Anaikuttam dam, which serves as one of the major drinking water sources for Virudhunagar town, is waiting to be repaired.
With the catchment areas getting good rainfall, the dam started to get water only in the last three days. As against its maximum storage of 125.75 mcft, the dam had only 7.58 mcft of water.
After having dead storage for several days, the water level improved marginally to 3.7 metres only on Sunday due to the rains.
The dam used to supply two million litres of water daily to the town.
However, it has been plagued by a serious operational problem in its three-decade old shutters. The shutters, simply, cannot be operated.
“A couple of years ago, when the shutters were raised to maintain the water at optimum level, the engineers could not lower it to stop the release of water. Consequently, the entire water got drained,” an engineer said.
On Saturday, Virudhunagar Collector, R. Kannan, along with Sivakasi Sub-Collector, C. Dinesh Kumar and Public Works Department officials inspected the dam.
The officials were trying to plug the minor leaks in the nine shutters. The PWD officials were highly cautious about lifting the shutters as their railings have developed a technical snag.
The dam has its catchment areas in Western Ghats that flows through Pilavakkal Periyar dam. “After filling up 40 tanks downstream Pilavakkal Periyar dam, water would come to Anaikuttam dam,” Executive Engineer (Lower Vaippar), K. Gurusamy said.
The PWD has already sent a proposal to renovate the nine shutters and construct three new spillways for maintaining the water level in the dam at a cost of ₹23.5 crore.
