With the Mettur storage being around 18 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft), there seems to be little possibility of the authorities even considering the question of opening the dam’s shutters for irrigation on the scheduled date of June 12.
Given the situation, agricultural specialists have openly called upon farmers, who are dependent upon the Cauvery river for meeting their requirements, to skip raising paddy during the short-term kuruvai cultivation season and go for the long term samba only.
The present situation can change only in the event of very heavy rainfall in the Cauvery catchment in Kerala and Karnataka in the coming weeks to such an extent that Mettur witnesses a huge increase in its water level and realises 50 tmc ft more.
A former official of the Agriculture department, T. Kalaivanan, who has prepared a report along with his colleagues V. Palaniappan, V. Kaliamurthy and T. Venkatesan and submitted to the State government, is of the view that a minimum of 240 tmc ft is required for the current water year. In his calculation, the inflows since the 1991 interim order reveal that the State realised, on an average, 218 tmc ft annually. With the present storage in Mettur, it would not be advisable to go for kuruvai. Instead, if the agriculturists start raising the samba crop between the middle of August and the first week of September, that will be beneficial to them, as they will have the benefit of northeast monsoon.
S. Santhanagopalakrishnan, another former official, suggests that in the event of “constant and continuous inflow to Mettur,” the government consider encouraging community nurseries with incentives for the farmers coming forward to raise community nurseries which would also help in saving water.
In the meantime, the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) has planned to hold its customary pre-[south west] monsoon meeting on May 21, where an appraisal of the pattern of rainfall and flows in the Cauvery river during the current water year 2023-24 and a forecast of the coming monsoon are expected to be made.
As for shortfall in realisation, the figure is around 30 tmc ft, going by the calculation of Tamil Nadu. A senior official here says that even as per the estimate of the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee, the deficit is 7.6 tmc ft. Had the year 2023-24 been normal, the figure would be around 97 tmc ft. The realisation, as on May 13, was 79.2 tmc ft since June 1, 2023.
