Water level breaches 50 feet in Mettur dam following discharge of surplus water from Karnataka

CHENNAI: Water level breached 50 feet in Mettur dam on Thursday following discharge of surplus water from Kabini and other reservoirs in Karnataka.

Thanks to intensive rainfall in the catchment area of Kabini reservoirs in Kerala and Karnataka. The rainfall-induced flow downstream into Cauvery over the last three days has helped Mettur fill gradually.

At 8 am on Thursday, an inflow of 27,665 cusecs was recorded at Biligundlu and it increased to 31,102 cusecs by 4 pm. It took the water storage level from 50.030 feet in Mettur reservoir on Wednesday evening to 51.380 ft on Thursday (4 pm) evening. The total storage capacity of the reservoir is 120 ft.

Sources in the department said that the Karnataka government has been discharging surplus water from Kabini reservoir.

At 4 pm, they were discharging water at the rate of 70,000 cusecs and it takes the cumulative inflow from Karnataka to 75,500 cusecs.

However, the heavy inflow would reach the inter-state contact point Biligundlu by Friday evening.

Since the water level breached 63 ft as against its full storage capacity of 65 ft, the inflow of water to the Kabini reservoir is being diverted downstream, said an official and noted it is good news from Tamil Nadu’s perspective since it has been denied its rightful share of Cauvery water in previous water year (from June 1, 2023 to May 31 2024).