Brace up for monsoon battle, disaster panel tells response team

“More than 2000 members of disaster management authority have reached Nilgiris and a high-level review on heavy floods in Nilgiris will be reviewed by the state revenue and disaster management minister R B Udayakumar,” commissioner of revenue administration and disaster management K Satyagopal told DT Next.

“We are closely monitoring the dams in western districts and standard instructions passed to district collectors to check out for evacuation if required. The state is taking all preventive steps and the flood is drained into the downstream dams,” the official said. The heavy rains in Nilgiris biosphere have improved the groundwater table and there will be no drinking water shortage for the next few months in western and parts of Southern Tamil Nadu, Satyagopal said.

According to the Public Works Department, storage flow data issued on Thursday, TN received an inflow of 59,000 cusecs of water into twelve major dams located in western Tamil Nadu. Bhavanisagar dam that is fed by the Moyar, Siruvani and Bhavani river flow is receiving close 19,300 cusecs of water and the Pillur dam that caters to the districts of Erode, Coimbatore and Tiruppur is filling up fast. For drinking water and irrigation purpose TN public works department is releasing 3000 cusecs of water, the PWD report said.

The good news is that the Kabini dam in Karanataka which releases water into Cauvery is full by 83 per cent, but the Krishnaraja Sagar dam is full by only 28 per cent.