Udupi likely to face water shortage

The scattered rain last week has not added much water to the Baje dam against Swarna river, from where water is supplied to Udupi city.

The water level in the dam was 3.54 metres on Saturday. This figure is better when compared to last year, when water level in the dam was 2.18 metres. The officers of the Udupi City Municipal Council (CMC) expect the water stock in the dam to last from a fortnight to 18 days.

“Though there was scattered rain last week, we got only 6 cm of water one day. This is enough to take care of the water needs of the city for a day,” said K. Ganesh, Assistant Engineer of Udupi CMC.

The silver lining the CMC officers saw in the last week’s rain was that it helped to nearly fill the dam at Karkala. The Swarna river flows down from the Western Ghats, passes near Karkala town where a dam is constructed against it at Mundli.

From there, it flows down to Shiroor and then to Baje, Manipal and Shimbra before it goes further and joins the Arabian Sea. “Since the dam at Karkala is nearly filled, if there are any rains, we expect the excess water to flow downstream and reach Baje,” he said.

But with summer expected to intensify in May, the evaporation of water from the river and the Baje reservoir too would be high. The CMC would evaluate the situation after a fortnight and then take a decision to pump out water from about 10 big holes on the bed of the Swarna river to the Baje dam.

“If there are no rains in between and situation demands, we may have to pump water from these holes after May 15,” said K. Raghavendra, CMC Environment Engineer.