Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s allocation of Rs.100 crore in the Union Budget for interlinking of rivers has reignited concerns in Kerala over the impact of the Pampa-Achencoil-Vaipar Link Project (PAVLP), one of the inter-basin water transfer schemes formulated by the National Water Development Agency (NWDA).
Scientists and environmental groups feel that the proposed diversion of 634 million cubic metres of water from the Pampa and Achencoil rivers in Kerala to irrigate the Vaipar river basin in Tamil Nadu is fraught with long-term consequences for the water security of the Central Travancore region, the ecology of the Vembanad wetland system, and the sustainability of paddy farming in Kuttanad.
D. Padmalal, Head, Environmental Sciences, National Centre for Earth Science Studies (NCESS), says implementing the project without an impact assessment study will affect the water balance of the Pampa and Achencoil, impacting on their ecological, chemical, physical and biological health.
‘Not inter-State rivers’ Both the rivers originate and flow through Kerala and hence cannot be categorised as inter-State, says A.B. Anitha, Head, Hydrology, Centre for Water Resources Development and Management (CWRDM). She says the declaration of the Vembanad lake as a Ramsar site in 2000 had made it obligatory for the government not to disrupt the hydrological balance or ecology of the wetland system.
N.K. Sukumaran Nair, general secretary, Pampa Parirakshana Samithi, says both the rivers become dry at many locations during the summer. The Central Water Commission has also reported salinity intrusion in the Pampa during summer. Mr. Nair observes that all the reservoirs of the proposed project are in dense forest area, necessitating large-scale deforestation and submergence of virgin forests.
In 2003, the Kerala Assembly had passed a unanimous resolution urging the Centre to drop the PAVLP, terming it harmful to the State. It had argued that water was a State subject under the Constitution. A study by the CWRDM in the late 1990s had revealed that the Pampa and Achencoil basins were water-deficit, contrary to the NWDA claim that the rivers had surplus waters.
