SALEM: Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, on Tuesday, opened the Mettur dam to release water for Delta irrigation. With the dam receiving as much as 2.30 lakh cusecs inflow, the water discharged for irrigation would be based on the inflow, he said. As on Tuesday, the water level in the dam stood at 101 ft (of 105 ft) and storage level was recorded at 66 tmc ft. The dam is expected to fill to the brim soon.
Palaniswami attributed the increased inflow to the dam to the blessings of Tirupathi Lord Venkateswara and former chief minister J Jayalalithaa.
He pointed out that the Mettur dam, built in 1934, was first desilted by his government and farmers were allowed to take nearly 2.70 lakh cubic metres of mud. When water was released for irrigation from the dam last year, it had 109 ft of water and storage level was at 71 tmc ft. With this, the government was able to release 210 tmc ft of water for irrigation. He expressed hope in being able to release an adequate amount of water this year too.
School Education Minister K A Sengottaiyan, Higher Education Minister K P Anbalagan, Transport Minister Vijaya Baskar, Environment Minister KC Karuppannan, Social Welfare Minister Saroja, MP Chandrasekaran, MLAs Sakthivel, Venkatachalam, Manonmani, and Semmalai, Collector SA Raman and other officials took part in the event.
Mettur metrics
Inflow: 2.30 lakh cusecs
Water level: 101 ft
(of 120 ft)
Storage level: 66 tmcft
(full capacity:
93.47 tmcft)
Water release: 1,000 cusec for the next
132 days
Discharge to benefit: 16.05 lakh acres of land in Salem, Namakkal, Erode, Karur, Tiruchy, Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Ariyalur, Perambalur, Pudukottai and Cuddalore districts
Irrigation in numbers
Needs 339 tmc ft water for irrigation
The Mettur dam provides 220 tmc ft and the rest is fulfilled by the Northeast monsoon
For canal irrigation, 9.6 tmc ft needed
In Cauvery we trust
From the Cauvery river, more than 1,700 million litres is being supplied to people in eight districts through nearly 155 water schemes. For 20 districts, the river is the main water source