Flood alert near Kabini but Krishna Raja Sagar yet to touch maximum

Mysuru: While the monsoon may have been largely disappointing, the recent rain has increased the storage of the Kabini reservoir so much that the dam authorities have released a flood alert and  advised people in low lying areas to shift to safety.

The reservoir's water level was 2,283 feet on Tuesday as against its capacity to hold 2, 284 feet. Harangi too has filled up with its water level on Monday standing at 2857.21feet as against its capacity to hold 2859 feet.

But the story is very different at the Krishna Raja Sagar and Hemavathi dams, as their storage has not improved much despite the recent rain over the catchment area of the Cauvery. The water level at KRS on Monday stood at 101.95 feet  as against its capacity to hold 124.80 feet and at Hemavathi, the water level  was 2887 feet as against its capacity to hold 2922 feet of water .

KRS has a live storage of only 19.98 TMC ft of water as against its capacity of 45.05 TMC ft, Kabini, 13.73 TMC ft as against its capacity of 15.67 TMC ft, Hemavathi, 11.17 TMC ft as against its capacity of 35.76 TMC, and Harangi, 7.47 TMC ft as against its capacity of 8.07 TMC ft.

Going by the director of the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre, Dr G S Srinivas Reddy, the state  received 663 mm of rain from  June 1 to September 16, as against the normal rainfall of 748 mm for this season, recording a deficit  of 11 per cent so far. 

"The poor rainfall in July affected 25 per cent of the crops. Although the forecast for September is good, we will wait till the month end before we declare a drought," he added.