For the first time in the history of Tamil Nadu, a chief minister has gone all the way from the state secretariat in Chennai, to open the sluice gates of the Mettur Dam only to release water for agriculture in the delta districts. While his late leader J. Jayalalithaa followed the practice of giving orders to open the sluice gates and made officials wait for her statements, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami has gone a step further by opening the sluice gates in person.
For EPS, the water flowing down the Mettur dam to the delta is like the biggest achievement that no other chief minister in the state has seen in the last six decades. More than water, much dramatics went into projecting the chief minister and claiming victory for the Centre’s decision to set up the Cauvery Management Authority. EPS turned emotional, when he said that his leader was only worried about Cauvery when she was admitted in the hospital.
After opening the sluice gates, EPS also laid the foundation stone for a stupa to mark the achievement of his government in getting a permanent solution to the Cauvery dispute in a legal route. “In the footsteps of our Amma, our government has made sure that Karnataka gives the legally mandated water from Cauvery to Tamil Nadu. We will release the required water, time to time. Our government for the farmers,” Palanisami said after opening the gates as 2,000 cusecs of water was released from Mettur dam for irrigation purpose.
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With the south west monsoon intensifying in Kerala and Karnataka, both the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu received a copious amount of rainfall in the last one week. With this, both the Kabini and KrishnaRajaSagar (KRS) dams reached its full level and Karnataka released water from KRS. With heavy rains in the neighbouring Karnataka, the water level at Mettur dam reached 109 tmcft on Wednesday. As of now 2,000 cusecs of water was released from Mettur dam, and this will gradually increase on an hourly basis and touch 20,000 cusecs soon. The water released from Mettur usually takes five days to reach the delta region in Tiruchi and Thanjavur districts.
It may be recalled that the Mettur dam reached its full capacity in 2014. Last year, there wasn't much rainfall in Karnataka, and because it was a distress year, water was opened from Mettur only in October. For the last three years, since 2014, the Mettur dam was not opened on the customary date of June 12, as there was not enough water in the reservoir. In 2017, there was a four-month delay in opening the dam to release water for sowing Kuruvai crop. Result: the delta which had already lost one of its three crops―Thaladi, Samba and Kuruvai―suffered as Cauvery was bone dry. And this year too, though the CRA was set up and the Cauvery dispute was resolved legally, the government was not sure if Karnataka would release the water. The government had earlier announced a special package of Rs 115.67 crores for delta farmers as the Kuruvai season had already begun.
Apparently, after much delay the Centre implemented the February 16 order of the Supreme Court. The Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA) was formed by the Central government, after the BJP lost in Karnataka, on June 1. Subsequently, the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee (CWRC) was formed on June 23. While both CWMA and CWRC have not spoken on the distress sharing formula, the CWMA in July ordered Karnataka to release 31.24 tmcft water from Cauvery to Tamil Nadu. Since then, with the onset of the south west monsoon, Karnataka witnessed incessant rains in the catchment areas, thus pushing Karnataka to release water.
It was on July 14 that the Cauvery Neeravari Nigama Limited issued a flood warning to the low-lying areas around KRS dam, as the water level in the dam reached its full capacity of 124.8 ft. Following this, flood alerts were issued in Salem and Dharmapuri districts as the water discharged from Karnataka was likely to touch 90,000 cusecs by the end of the day.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties took to the social media to comment on the chief minister’s act to go all the way to open the dam to release water for irrigation. “In a first, TN CM EPS releases water from Mettur Dam for delta irrigation. News Opening of the Mettur Dam water for irrigation is the job of the Assistant Executive Engineer (PWD) and not that of the Chief Minister,” PMK leader and MP Dr Anbumani Ramadoss tweeted.