The initial phase of this year’s southwest monsoon has yielded a bountiful flow not only into the Mettur dam but also into many other reservoirs in the Cauvery and Parambikulam-Aliyar Project (PAP) basins. Ten major irrigation reservoirs have higher water levels than what they had on the corresponding day last year.
On Saturday morning, the level at Mettur, the lifeline of the Cauvery delta for irrigation and drinking water requirements, stood a little less than the full level of 120 ft. The storage was 92.343 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) against the capacity of 93.47 tmc ft. The dam recorded an inflow of around 1.19 lakh cubic feet per second (cusecs). On the same day a year ago, the level was 47 feet lower. The storage was 34.6 tmc ft.
Bhavanisagar, which comes next to Mettur in terms of storage, has 25.344 tmc ft against its capacity of 32.8 tmc ft. This was marginally higher than the storage exactly a year ago. At that time, the storage was around 24.84 tmc ft. On Saturday morning, the inflow was around 21,000 cusecs. Amaravathi, also in the Cauvery basin, was almost full with the storage being 3.91 tmc ft against the capacity of 4.047 tmc ft. Last year, it had almost one- and-a-half tmc ft less than what it has now.
