With water-level in the Alamatti reservoir rapidly depleting, farmers’ leaders have demanded that the State government urge the Maharashtra government to release the Krishna water from the Koyna dam.
Farmers’ leaders and people’s representatives, including Tammanna Hangaragi, vice-president of the Bijapur Zilla Panchayat, have said in a press release that people were bound to face a crisis during summer as water will not be available for both drinking and irrigation purposes.
The reservoir irrigates 6 lakh hectares of land in north Karnataka region. The release said that most of the farmers in the Krishna basin cultivate sugarcane, a water-intensive crop. Without water, farmers will suffer losses.
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Places where the multi-village drinking water scheme has been implemented will also face scarcity in the coming days if the Maharashtra government is not urged to release water from the Koyna dam, the release said.
The government must understand the seriousness of the problem and make sincere efforts to address the issue before the situation worsens, it said.
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Sources in Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigam Ltd. (KBJNL) said Alamatti reservoir has 41.66 tmcft of water, of which live storage is 24 tmcft. The gross capacity of the dam is 123 tmcft.
For irrigation purposes, water is being released at 7,295 cusecs regularly to the canals and to the Narayanapur dam.
“If the water is released at this rate every day, then the water-level will reach the dead storage level within a fortnight,” sources said.
The reservoir has not received water from the Koyna dam since October.
Some farmers have alleged that releasing water to the Narayanapur dam was unscientific as it was being done to meet the demand of some private industries.