S. Ganesan UNCERTAIN TIMES: Farm workers transplanting Kuruvai paddy in Thanjavur district. TIRUCHI: With water level in the Mettur reservoir falling below the 70 feet mark, farmers in the delta region are anxious over the fate of the kuruvai crop. The Agriculture Department planned to cover about 1.11 lakh hectares in the core delta districts of Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam this season. Transplanting has been completed in over 50 per cent of this area. This apart, early paddy was raised on about 50,000 hectares using groundwater and the crop would be ready for harvest in August. On Thursday, the water level in the Mettur dam stood at 69.59 ft (full level 120 ft). Inflow was just 1,345 cusecs and discharge, 13,000 cusecs. Public Works Department officials estimated that the present storage would last only for about 20 days. Farmers fear a crisis unless there is drastic improvement in the inflow over the next 10 days. The kuruvai crop will require assured supply for another 90 days. In the meantime, farmers will go in for samba by July-end in many parts of the delta as the irrigation season extends up to January. The southwest monsoon has not brought enough rain to the catchments in Karnataka so far. "The situation is certainly a cause for anxiety, but we hope it will only be temporary and the southwest monsoon will turn active soon,' said S. Renganathan, secretary, Cauvery Delta Farmers Welfare Association. He suggested farmers delay samba cultivation by at least two weeks, till mid-August. Between June 1 and July 16, Tamil Nadu had got only 8.22 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) in the Cauvery from Karnataka against its share of 32.8 tmcft for the period, PWD officials here said. The combined storage in the four Karnataka reservoirs of Krishnaraja Sagar, Kabini, Hemavathi and Herangi was around 63 tmcft, a little over 50 per cent of their total capacity of 114 tmcft. On Wednesday, storage in the Krishnaraja Sagar was 25.86 tmcft against its full capacity of 49.45 tmcft. The inflow into the reservoir was 3,183 cusecs. The storage in the Kabini reservoir was 14.53 tmcft (full storage 19 tmcft) and the worrying factor was the poor inflow of about 1,200 cusecs. Normally, Tamil Nadu gets the surplus flow from the Kabini. The Hemavathi reservoir had a storage of 17.86 tmcft (37.10 tmcft) while the storage at Herangi was 5.8 tmcft (8.07 tmcft).