Bengaluru, 22 July

Most of the dams in State are filled to the brim, thanks to the torrential rains in the catchment areas of the major rivers for the past few days. The coastal and Malnad region in the Western Ghats have been receiving incessant rains for the past 15 days due to which many rivers originating from here are in spate.

According to the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre (KSNDMC), the inflow of water in the Cauvery basin was 98,577 cusecs while the outflow was 70,645 cusecs. The KSNDMC said the cumulative outflow since 1 June, was 118.25 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet, while the outflow was 41.52 TMC ft. KRS dam with a reservoir level of 124 ft presently has 123.2 ft water.

Other dams in the Cauvery basin namely Harangi, Hemavathi and Kabini are also filled to the brim. The rains in the Cauvery basin have been received at a time when State was worried with the scanty rainfall and was gearing up for a legal battle with neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

The Cauvery Water Regulation Committee had directed Karnataka to release one TMC ft water to neighbouring Tamil Nadu till July-end. Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar said the CWRC had directed the State to release 20 TMC water starting from 11 July till month-end. He also said that 51,000 cusecs water is being released to Tamil Nadu.

In a normal year, we have to release 40.14 TMC ft of water. Karnataka will be able to release the requisite water to Tamil Nadu, Shivakumar said.

Dams in the Krishna river basin namely Bhadra, Tungabhadra, Ghataprabha, Malaprabha, Almatti and Narayanapura are almost filled up and water is being released from these dams. These six dams have a gross capacity of 422.45 TMC while on Monday there was a storage of 312.96 TMC. Last year, the storage was 129.59 TMC water on this day.

Three hydel project dams Linganamakki, Supa and Varahi and Vani Vilas Sagar too are completely filled up. The major dams in State with a gross water holding capacity of 895.62 TMC have gross storage of 615.20 TMC.

Last year when the state witnessed an unprecedented drought where 223 out of 236 Taluks were declared drought hit, these dams had 300.95 TMC water. -PTI