Water may reach Mettur today

Water released from Karnataka dams following the Supreme Court order is yet to reach the Stanley reservoir at Mettur. Officials predict that the fresh inflows would reach on Friday night or by Saturday morning.

Owing to a significant drop in the inflows as against the anticipated quantum, fears were raised whether any fresh release was really effected by the neighbouring State. However, citing natural conditions, officials monitoring the inflows at the Central Water Commission’s water gauging station at Biliguntulu said the inflow would pick up gradually and reach Mettur.

Karnataka announced it released 10,000 cusecs water on September 12 and said it would continue to do so till September 19 — the crucial day when the CRA meet will be held in Delhi. Accordingly, as per the Mettur PWD records, 8,000 cusecs were released from the Kabini and 2,000 from the Krishnarajasagar (KRS) on September 12. As the water has to traverse 182 km from KRS and 240 km from the Kabini it would take at least 60 hours to reach Mettur. This means that the water should have reached Mettur Dam on Friday. But the inflow was only 8,831 cusecs at 8 am on Friday and by 4 pm, again rose to 9,300 cusecs.

Further, Karnataka has released 11,400 cusecs (9,000 cusecs from Kabini and 2,400 from KRS) on September 13 and on Friday, another 11,600 cusecs has been discharged into the Cauvery, sources added.

Meanwhile the storage at the Mettur Dam is on a gradual rise. The level at the dam on Friday stood at 82.250 feet against its full capacity of 120 feet. The dam holds 44.236 tmcft of water against its full capacity of 93.5 tmcft. The discharge was 1,940 cusecs for local use as against a demand of 2,000 cusecs.