Chennai: Absence of rains and week-long dry weather in Tamil Nadu have drastically reduced the inflow of water in to TN dams. Chennai lake levels and the storage in Mettur and Bhavanisagar reservoirs have started declining, public works department sources said.
With almost no rainfall in the catchment areas of Cauvery river, Mettur has been receiving an inflow of around 1,200 cusecs for the past two days and the outflow is maintained around 7,000 cusecs and this had reduced the storage which was inching towards 100 feet to reduce to 80 feet within a fortnight, sources said.
The state agriculture department wanted to increase the outflow, but due to poor inflow of water in to Mettur and Bhavanisagar, the outflow has to be restricted, PWD sources said. As on date the storage level in Mettur dam is around 43 tmc feet of the total capacity of 93 tmc feet and similarly Bhavanisagar has storage of less than 60 percent of its capacity.
According to Chennai metro water sources, the inflow into four reservoirs in Chennai also drastically reduced on Wednesday. Red Hills and Poondi reservoir received an inflow of less than 100 cusecs on Wednesday and the outflow of water from all the reservoirs was around 140 cusecs. The total storage of water in city reservoirs stood at 4.5 tmc feet against its total capacity of 11 tmc feet.
The only respite for the water managers in the state came with Kanyakumari district receiving rainfall on Tuesday leading to fresh inflow of water into Pechiparai and Perunchani dams on Wednesday. “We are awaiting for more spells of rain by next week and the state’s overall water storage is now 55 per cent”, said an informed official.
