Rains in Karnataka, Cauvery in spate

More than 70,000 cusecs of water has been released from Kabini and Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) dam in Karnataka and the gushing waters has begun to flow into Tamil Nadu since Monday. At 5pm, Biligundulu realised 40,000 cusecs, almost double from 20,000 cusecs at 8am on Monday. More water is expected to reach Tamil Nadu by night. The copious discharge from Karnataka follows heavy rains in river Cauvery’s catchment areas. 

Following the orders of Dharmapuri district collector S Malarvizhi, the people living in villages along the Cauvery banks such as ‘Ootamalai’, ‘Alambadi’, ‘Chatram’ and ‘Mudalai Pannai’ were alerted through drum beating on the flood situation. A similar alert has been issued in Salem asking people not to venture into flooded Cauvery river either to take bath or wash clothes. Meanwhile the inflow into the Mettur dam has risen gradually to 12,450 cusecs at 8am on Monday from 11,241 cusecs on Sunday morning. Water from Hogenakkal is expected to reach Mettur dam by Monday night. About 18,000 cusecs is released from the dam for delta irrigation and the storage level in the dam is at 89.770 feet as against its full reservoir level of 120 feet on Monday morning. Meanwhile, the Bhavani Sagar dam in Erode district has reached 100.87 feet as against its full reservoir level of 105 feet and realises an inflow of 5272 cusecs at 4pm on Monday.