T.N. Rains | Heavy downpour in Vellore and neighbouring districts fills up tanks, waterbodies

Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Ranipet & Tirupattur districts in TN have 4,167 water bodies incl. 1,119 MI maintained by PWD. Rains have filled up 40% of water bodies in Tiruvannamalai & Ranipet, incl. irrigation tanks. 47 flood-prone areas identified in Ranipet; helplines set up.

Non-stop rains in the catchment areas in Vellore, Tiruvannamalai, Ranipet and Tirupattur districts are filling up irrigation tanks. The irrigation tanks are maintained by the Water Resources Department (WRD).

Rains have been lashing parts of Tamil Nadu since Wednesday, November 29, 2023, and continued well into Thursday.

Together, these four districts have a total of 4,167 water bodies including 1,119 Minor Irrigation (MI) that are maintained by the Public Works Department (PWD) with rest of the water bodies such as ponds, lakes and uranis maintained by the Rural Development (RD) Department in these districts.

Among these four districts, Tiruvannmalai has the highest number of 1,886 water bodies including 600 PWD maintained irrigation tanks, followed by Ranipet district with 1,718 waterbodies (369 PWD tanks).

“We are continuously monitoring the situation especially in Jawadhu Hills as two rivers, Naganadhi and Kamadalam have been getting high inflow of rainwater from the hills for the past few days. The Shenbagathoppu dam, which depends on the Kamadalam river in the hills, has reached 70 per cent of its total storage capacity of 287 mcft water (62 ft),” S. Raja Ganapathy, Assistant Engineer (AE), WRD (Arani sub-division), told The Hindu.

Among the four sub-divisions of irrigation tanks in Tiruvannamalai, Cheyyar has the highest number with 270 tanks, followed by Arani (173 tanks), Tiruvannamalai (140 tanks) and Sathanur dam (60 tanks). A group of three to four villages depend on each tank for irrigation. 

Of the total water bodies, around 40 percent of them have reached their full capacity especially in Tiruvannamalai and Ranipet with another 10 percent of water bodies including irrigation tanks having reached 75 per cent of their total capacity on Thursday.