Coimbatore: With the summer temperature shooting up in Coimbatore, the storage in the Siruvani dam, which supplies drinking water to Coimbatore, is decreasing rapidly. If there are no summer showers in the catchment areas of the Siruvani reservoir, Coimbatore may head for an acute water scarcity by mid-May.
The shortfall in rainfall during the recent monsoon in the reservoir’s catchment areas in Kerala has led to a dip in the storage in the Siruvani reservoir. The storage in the dam stands at 869.7 m (above mean sea level). This is three m. less than the storage in Siruvani dam in March last year.
In March 2015, the storage in Siruvani dam stood at 872.9 m compared to 869.7 m now. The water level in the dam stands at 19 feet while in March 2015 it was at 24 feet.
“The water level has decreased due to shortage in rainfall in Kerala,” said a senior official. But the showers on Saturday evening in Siruvani area has buoyed up the spirits of the water managers in the city. They are hopeful of maintaining the supplies till mid-May, when the elections are scheduled in Tamil Nadu.
However, officials insist it will not be a repeat of the drought of 2012 when the water level dipped abysmally. “We are waiting for the summer showers. We received showers for a few minutes this evening. We can manage with this stock of water up to mid May. In case we do not get summer showers, we will have a meeting with the corporation officials and will find out a way to tackle with the shortage of water, which we don’t think is going to happen,” informed the executive engineer of Siruvani water dam.
The storage situation in Pillur dam is comparatively better. Water level stood at 1,388 msl on Saturday morning against the capacity of 1,400 msl.
“Last year on the same day we had recorded 1,376.5 msl in the dam. This dam doesn’t depend much on rainfalls as the water comes from a chain of reservoirs starting from Ooty. So, we need not to worry about the inflow of water in Pillur dam,” informed the executive engineer of Pillur dam.
