DOI: 10.36347/sjavs.2022.v09i01.001

Pages: 1-8

Restoration and rehabilitation of irrigation tanks is gaining much attention due to the increased temporal variation in the rainfall. This study was carried out in the first four tanks (i.e. Arungunam, Devadur, Mariputhur and Kavadur tanks) of the Madurantakam tank cluster, which lies in the Kiliyar sub basin, Palar basin, Tamil Nadu, India. The study was aimed at assessing the performance of the tanks and deriving a Tank Rehabilitation Index (TRI) for prioritizing the tanks based on 24 indicators reflecting the physical, hydrological and socio technical aspects. The physical performance of the tanks was measured in terms of their storage capacity. Capacity estimation was carried out using Bathymetry survey and Google earth. The results showed that the Kavadur tank performed well with 89.29% storage capacity when compared with the Arungunam, Devadur and Mariputhur tanks having 75%, 57.42% and 42.11% as their storage capacities respectively. A score-based method was adopted in finding out the TRI. It was found that the Kavadur tank tops the priority for rehabilitation with a score of 14.50 followed by the Arungunam and Devadur tank with a score of 14.25. The Mariputhur tank scored the least (13.75). Much variation in the TRI developed could be obtained, if the tanks were selected randomly over different reaches of the cluster.