COIMBATORE: The worst fears of delta farmers getting ready for samba season might come true as the government on Tuesday stopped water release from Mettur dam for irrigation due to depleting storage levels.
As the water storage level in the dam fell to 30.900 feet as against the full reservoir capacity of 120 feet and inflow continued to remain drastically low at 163 cusecs on Tuesday at 8 a.m., the officials stopped the release of water to delta districts, nearly 110 days prior to scheduled January 28 date. The sluices of the Mettur dam were opened on the customary date of June 12 for ‘kuruvai’ cultivation.
From a discharge of over 6,000 cusecs until last month, the release was dropped to around 3,000 cusecs on October 6 and 2,300 cusecs on Sunday morning and further down to 2000 cusecs by noon, before completely halting the release of water at 6 a.m. on Tuesday. The dam now holds just eight tmc to meet out the drinking water requirements.
“Currently, only 500 cusecs of water is discharged from the dam for drinking water requirements. Water could be released for the delta region, only if water storage position improves in the dam,” said an official.
According to delta farmers, of 13 lakh acres of samba cultivation, 8.50 lakh acres from Thanjavur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Mayiladuthurai and Cuddalore are dependent on river irrigation.
“Since the water release from Mettur has been stopped, the water flow in the Cauvery and the Kollidam would be minimal and the cultivation of samba would be a question mark,” said Sami Natarajan, state general secretary of Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam.
Natarajan said the northeast monsoon might not support samba cultivation as there is no proper storage facility. “It might help rain-fed tail-end regions where samba cultivation has already commenced. But it poses risk as heavy rains after 20 days of cultivation would result in flooding and crops getting damaged,” he said.
He also appealed to the government to decide on the samba compensation at the earliest and announce a decent amount as the kuruvai compensation of Rs 13,500 per hectare was inadequate.