Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has stressed the need for the State to have better reservoirs, with the capacity to control floods. “This is the lesson we need to learn from this monsoon,” he said in a press note issued here to refute the allegation by Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala that the floods last month were a man-made disaster caused by opening all the affected dams at one go.
Citing the Central Water Commission’s (CWC) report on the floods in Kerala, Mr.Vijayan, who is currently in the United States for treatment, said the State had received 14,000 million cubic metres of water through rainfall, while its dams had the capacity to store only 2,280 million cubic metres.
The press note maintained that dams, in fact, had stored up a bulk of the rain water and released only a part of it, thereby preventing a much bigger flood than what had occurred.
“In the case of the Idukki dam, the volume of water that flowed into the reservoir between August 9 and 22 was 999 million cubic metres while the spill was only 827 million cubic metres,” the note said, giving similar facts on the Kakki-Anathodu reservoir, and the Idamalayar and Pampa dams.