Mettur dam reaches its full capacity for fifth time this year

SALEM: Mettur dam on Wednesday reached its full capacity of 120 feet for the fifth time this year. Around 64,990 cusecs of water was being released from the dam, leading to flooding in the Cauvery river.

At 6am on Wednesday, the inflow was about 1,14,098 cusecs at Hogenakkal after Karnataka discharged a total of 1,17,780 cusecs of water, which included 26,450 cusecs from the Kabini dam and 91,330 cusecs from the Krishna Raja Sagar (KRS) dam. There was substantial inflow into these dams (70,954 cusecs to KRS and 26,195 cusecs to Kabini) due to heavy rainfall in the catchment areas in Karnataka and Kerala."The water released from the dams began to reach Hogenakkal waterfalls from Monday night and subsequently reached the Mettur dam by Tuesday morning," said a water resources department official.The water level at the Mettur dam reached the full capacity of 120 feet for the fifth time around 4 am on Wednesday. On Monday, the water level was noted at 118.14 feet. "By Tuesday evening, it had increased to 119 feet," the official mentioned.The WRD official indicated that the water inflow was recorded at 1,14,098 cusecs in the early hours of Wednesday, but it suddenly dropped to 70,000 cusecs later and to 64,990 cusecs by evening. "We are discharging all surplus water into the Cauvery through the dam's 16 vent Ellis Saddle surplus bridge," the official stated. They were releasing 1,000 cusecs through the dam's left and right-side canals.