Heavy rain brings copious storage into dams in Virudhunagar district

Heavy rainfall in Virudhunagar district and Tenkasi district swells dam storage, leading to water discharge and crop damages.

Two days of rainfall reported in Virudhunagar district and Western Ghats of neighbouring Tenkasi district since Friday brought copious inflow to the dams in Virudhunagar district.

Though the storage in all dams got swelled significantly, the officials had to discharge water from at least four dams -- Periyar Pilavakkal, Vemabakottai, Irukkangudi and Golwarpatti -- as a precautionary measure on Friday due to heavy inflow and rain forecast for Saturday.

“With very heavy rainfall reported in Tenkasi district, water from Periyar dam, where the level was 199.60 metres as against it full reservoir level of 204.5 metres, water had to be released to keep some cushion in the reservoir,” an official said.

Similarly, heavy inflow of water Vembakottai dam had to be released as the storage swelled from mere 67.71 mcft (maximum storage 398.7 mcft) by 247.48 mcft to 315.19 mcft in the last two days.

Same was the case with Golwarpatti dam where the storage rose from 17.63 mcft to 117.56 mcft (maximum 178 mcft) and 500 cusecs had to be discharged.

Consequently, the inflow to Irukkangudi dam saw a sudden surge and the storage went up by 305.96 mcft -- from 55.38 mcft to 361.34 mcft in the last two days.

At least two tanks in the district faced breaches -- one in Vembakottai and another in Tiruchuli unions. While the breach in the former tank was plugged, efforts were on to set right the other one, the official said.