CHENNAI: Chief Minister M K Stalin ordered the release of water from the Mettur reservoir through the west and east channels on Tuesday as the storage in the dam has risen above 119 feet as against the full level of 120 feet and the discharge would be maintained for 13 days till December 13.
An official press release said that Mettur dam was opened after agriculturalist unions and farmers appealed to the Salem MP T M Selvaganapathy and Salem North MLA R Rajendran for letting out water into the west and east channels for irrigation.
An official press release said that a total of 45,000 acres of fields in Salem, Erode and Namakkal districts would be irrigated through the flow of water in the East and West channels with 27,000 acres lying along the East channel and another 18,000 acres along the West channel.
Water will also be let out through the Pullampatti channel for the benefit of 22,114 acres of land in Trichy and Ariyalur districts and the Puhiya Kattalai Mettur channel, irrigating 20,622 acres in Trichy and Thanjavur districts on Wednesday.
The releases would be made in the wake of the inflow from Krishnarajasagar and Kabini dams in Karnataka increasing following heavy rains in the neighbouring State.
Earlier, Leader of the Opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami accused the DMK government of not completing a Rs 565 crore project launched by his government on March 4, 2020, to divert the excess water from Mettur to the Sarabanga region in Salem district to store the water in the 100 dry lakes there.
He said that project envisaged pumping the excess water to the Thippampatti main water station and then let it flow into M Kallampatti, 12 km away, through pipelines so that it would reach the new sub-stations to be set up at Vellalapuram and Kannanthurai.
By doing that 12 PWD lakes, and 88 panchayat union lakes and ponds in 9 panchayat unions will be filled to irrigate 4,300 acres of land and the water would also recharge the groundwater in 40,000 acres of land, he said.
Though the initial phase of the project was completed and he had inaugurated the laying of pipelines from the Thippampatti main water pumping station on February 27, 2021, the DMK government that came to power after that failed to complete the project, Palaniswami said.
He also accused the DMK government of abandoning the underground sewage system at Anakaputhur in Tambaram Corporation that the AIADMK government had launched. Charging the DMK government with political vendetta in not completing the scheme, he called for a protest at the Anakaputhur library at 10 am on Saturday, August 3.
The protest was also against the DMK government’s plan to close down the Amma canteens and for demanding basic amenities to the people, he said.
