‘Tribunal should restrict storage capacity'

Projects for developing the capacity to store river waters should be restricted and maximum storage that can be developed for a river should be fixed for different points so that there was no dispute between states, said K. Dronacharyulu, former irrigation consultant to the State Government.

Talking to The Hindu here on Wednesday he said that the Second Krishna Water Dispute Tribunal headed by Justice Brijesh Kumar was hearing arguments from various parties, but none had suggested that a ceiling of 60 per cent of the allotted source of water should be the maximum storage allowed.

Karnataka had developed 115 per cent of its allocated 153 tmcft, he pointed out, the expert said.

Citing Karnataka as an example Mr. Dronacharyulu said that it had developed infrastructure with the capacity to store 166 tmcft in Almatti and Narayanapur reservoirs.

SC nod

He said that the Supreme Court had recently given nod for interlinking of the rivers. The interlinking of rivers, otherwise called the Inter-basin Water Transfer Scheme, was initiated in 1980.

There were 20 river basins in the country, and 12 of them were major rivers and eight minor river basins.

There was a huge variation in the per capita potential (average annual yields).

The per capita potential yield for Ganga and Brahmaputra mega systems was 2,833 cubic meters, Godavari and other peninsular rivers 2,026 cubic meters and for Cauvery basin it was as low as 19 cubic meters.

Sixty per cent of the water was available in Ganga and Brahmaputra and while in the rivers of peninsular India it was just 19 per cent.

The irrigation expert said that the linking of rivers by gravity flow was initially feasible.

It was possible to link most of the peninsular rivers through gravity.

There was, however, a need to provide infrastructure to store the water that was transferred from one river basin to another.

The Central Water Commission (CWC) in its report stated that the storage of flood water was inevitable for sustainable water resource development in the country.