Tamil Nadu's Nilgiris district begins monsoon damage survey, rains to continue

COONOOR: The task of preparing the estimates of the losses caused by the recent rains as also taking preventive measures in future in The Nilgiris district has begun. On Monday, District Monitoring Officer Ananda Kumar inspected the Kodappamund canal in Ooty along with The Nilgiris Collector SP Amrith and officials.

He said that although this canal has been de-silted, water over-flowed at some spots causing damage. So, it has been proposed to identify the spots requiring strengthening, he said. Collector said so far 60 trees which had fallen in different parts have been removed.

Rains continued on Sunday night and Monday in various parts of the district. For the 14 hours ending 8.30 am on Monday, a rainfall of 461.2 mm was recorded. Naduvattam got 80 mm, O'Valley 52 mm, Pandalur 50 mm and Devala 48 mm.

The rains have increased tea production in The Nilgiris, the largest tea growing district in South India. Deputy Director of UPASI Tea Research Foundation KG Udaya Bhanu pointed out that in the first half of current year, production in The Nilgiris has risen to 8.36 million kg (mkg) from 7.88 mkg in Jan-June 2021, marking an increase of 6.09 per cent.

Compared to the normal production of 7.25 mkg during the period as measured by the 5-year average, the increase has been 14.09 per cent. He said that because of well distributed summer showers, planters expected the production to increase to 15.60 mkg from 14.94 mkg in 2021. It would be more than the normal production as measured by the 10-year average production of 14.28 mkg till 2019.