The Cauvery is in spate. A rarity in the past two decades, the phenomenon has triggered celebrations all around. Farmers, despairing over the fate of their samba crop, are now rushing to get their fields ready. The dramatic turnaround is courtesy heavy rain in Karnataka. In the midst of this state of plenty, a question lingers — is Tamil Nadu doing enough to prevent all the surplus water from running into the sea?

In full flow, the Cauvery is a sight to behold. At its broadest, the ‘Akanda’ Cauvery between Karur and Tiruchi offers a breath-taking view — a spectacle that has become a rarity over the past couple of decades.

With the much-celebrated river in spate, it is time for all of Tamil Nadu to rejoice. Indeed, the State has been celebrating the river ever since a profuse monsoon over Kerala and Karnataka brought about a dramatic change in the ground situation here — all in a matter of just two weeks.

Till mid-July, the Cauvery had been dry and desolate. It is now flowing thick and fast as the Stanley Reservoir at Mettur in Salem district received huge inflows from Karnataka’s Kabini and Krishnaraja Sagar dams, which have also reached their full reservoir levels (FRL). It was after a gap of five years that Mettur touched its FRL of 120 ft. around noon on July 23. This was the 39th instance of the reservoir reaching the FRL in its 85-year history. The last recorded FRL was on August 5, 2013.

“Nothing could make us happier than the Cauvery flowing in all its majesty. I was wondering whether I will be able to witness the Cauvery in full flow ever again, in my lifetime. The sight brought forth a surge of memories,” gushed 83-year-old A.V.Gopala Desikan, a farmer activist in Kulithalai.

“After more than a decade, the people in the entire Cauvery delta are eager to celebrate the Aadi Perukku festival. We look forward to a good samba crop,” said Arupathy P.Kalyanam, General Secretary, Federation of Farmers Associations Cauvery Delta Districts.

Even before the Mettur dam reached its FRL, Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami visited the reservoir on July 19 to open its sluices, the first head of the state administration to do so.

One of the largest dams in the country, Mettur irrigates approximately 16.4 lakh ha in Salem, Namakkal, Erode, Karur, Tiruchi, Thanjavur, Ariyalur, Perambalur, Tiruvarur, Nagapattinam, Pudukottai and Cuddalore districts. However, the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal and the Supreme Court have recognised only about 9.8 lakh ha or 24.71 lakh acres as the State’s irrigated area under the Cauvery.

Till about a month ago, farmers in the Cauvery delta were unsure of the prospects of the samba crop and were pinning their hopes on the newly-formed Cauvery Water Management Authority to force Karnataka to release water. The level of water at the Stanley reservoir was at a meagre 39.94 ft. of water on June 12, the customary date of opening of the sluices for farm operations in delta region, forcing the government to defer the opening of the dam.

It was only from July 10 that the dam started receiving copious inflows. The water level, which stood at 65.15 ft. (storage: 28.67 thousand million cubic ft.) on July 10, started rising rapidly. The inflow into the river was at more than one lakh cusecs for four days between July 16 and 19, the maximum being 1.07 lakh cusecs on July 17.

Once the dam reached its capacity and the entire inflow had to be released, the PWD authorities started diverting a portion of the water into the Coleroon from the Upper Anicut (Mukkombu).

Taken by surprise, farmers in the rice bowl of Tamil Nadu are now hurrying into agricultural operations as the water is already flowing in the irrigation canals. As farmers prepare to till the soil, concerns over the poor condition of many irrigation canals and structures which could impede water flow to the tail-end areas, credit access and availability of fertilisers and quality seeds play on their minds.

What about wastage?

But topping the list is the angst over the surplus flows from Mettur running into the sea. While the PWD and the district authorities are pushing to fill up all lakes and tanks, farmers organisations rue the absence of a plan to create additional infrastructure to harness the water.

“We put forth a suggestion to construct about 18 check dams across both Cauvery and Coleroon rivers, wherever possible, between Upper Anicut and Lower Anicut. With global warming, monsoons have become erratic and we have to think of ways to judiciously harness the surplus flow when available,” observed Mannargudi S.Ranganathan, general secretary, Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association.

The long-pending proposal of linking the Cauvery with the Gundar would, according to the farmers, help people in dry regions such as Pudukottai, Sivagangai and Ramanathapuram. The project envisages a new gravity canal of about 250 km length to carry the surplus waters from the Cauvery to the Agniyaru, the South Vellar, the Manimutharu, the Vaigai and the Gundar under the intra-State river-linking programme, to irrigate 3.37 lakh hectares in Karur, Tiruchi, Pudukottai, Sivaganga, Virudhunagar and Ramanathapuram districts.

Pointing out that on an average 50 tmc ft had gone waste, through the Coleroon, during floods every time, P.M. Natarajan, former Director, Centre for Climate Change, Periyar Maniammai University, said that it is time for the government to launch a programme for creating nearly one million farm ponds of 1,500 cubic metres each.

Relief for the government

For the State government faced with an increasingly restive farming community, the turn of events on the Cauvery front has come as a huge relief.

A majority of farmers in the delta region have not been able to raise kuruvai paddy for seven consecutive years, due to the absence of adequate water in the Mettur dam.

With the constitution of the Cauvery Water Management Authority (CWMA), as per the Supreme Court order, the State government claimed credit for bringing to a logical conclusion the lengthy legal battle that former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa pursued to resolve the decades old inter-state water dispute.

It is another matter that only the surplus water from Kabini and Krishnaraja Sagar Dams has been released so far. Farmers’ representatives such as Mr. Kalyanam believe it is important that this should be brought to the notice of the CWMA.

But for now, such matters seem to have been pushed to the background with the Cauvery flowing bank to bank.

(with inputs from Syed Muthahar Saqaf in Salem and T. Ramakrishnan in Chennai)