Cauvery has enough water for city

With summer ahead, Bengalureans need not worry about Cauvery water for drinking this year. With a good South-West and NorthEast monsoon last year, the reservoirs in Cauvery catchment area have 79 per cent storage of water, which is sufficient to meet the drinking water needs of Bengaluru and other places up to May-end. The next south-west monsoon begins in June.

As much as 3 TMC of water per month and totally 10 TMC of water up to the end of May are needed from reservoirs in Cauvery basin to meet the drinking water needs of Bengaluru, Mysuru and over 625 villages and few towns adjoining the Cauvery River.

According to Dr G.S. Srinivas Reddy, for mer director, Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, all the four reservoirs in Cauvery basin have 90.34 TMC of water, as against their gross capacity 114.57 TMC. At this time last year, the storage was 64.28 TMC.

In Cauvery basin, Harangi reservoir has 7.81 TMC (92 per cent) as against its gross capacity 8.50TMC, Hemavathi has 24.22TMC (65 per cent) as against its capacity 37.10TMC, KRS has 40.71 TMC (82 per cent) as against its capacity 49.45 TMC, Kabini has 17.60TMC (90 per cent) as against its capacity 19.52 TMC.

Also the State has already released more than 240 TMC of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu from June 2021 so far, while it was supposed to release 177.25 TMC for the entire water year (June 2021 to May June 2022), as per the final order of Cauvery water dispute tribunal, Reddy added.

Last year during SouthWest Monsoons (from June 1 to September 30) the state received 8 per cent deficit rainfall - that is 787 mm of rainfall as against normal of 852mm. But, North interior Karnataka, and South interior Karnataka including Cauvery basin received 4 per cent excess rainfall each, Malnad received 18 per cent excess rainfall, and coastal area received 13 per cent deficit rainfall.

Also during North East Monsoons (From 1 October 2021 to 31 December 2021) last year, the State received 88 per cent excess rainfall that is it received 342 mm of rainfall as against 182 mm of normal rainfall.