During the British era, several irrigation engineers had executed long-lasting projects in India. Only a handful of them are remembered — and deified. Colonel J. Pennycuick (1841-1911), the architect of the Mullaperiyar dam, is one of them.
He is credited with having transformed the Cumbum Valley into a fertile belt, dotted with paddy fields, vegetables, flower gardens, coconut plantations, and vineyards. To this day, his dam meets the needs of the water-deficit districts of Theni, Dindigul, Madurai, Ramanathapuram and Sivaganga.
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People of the valley, especially farmers, are so grateful to Pennycuick that they make offerings to his portrait on his birth anniversary, which falls during the harvest festival of Pongal. However, it may be surprising to note that he was not the first choice when the British decided to dam the Periyar in the later part of the 19th Century.
History of the Periyar Project, a publication authored by the Public Works Department’s Executive Engineer, A.T. Mackenzie (published in 1898 and republished in 1963), reveals that the idea of diverting the west-flowing Periyar into Madurai had existed for long, but “merely as an idea”. In 1850, work on a small dam and a channel began. But it was abandoned because of fever that spread among workers and the demand for “excessive wages”. The project was revived 12 years later by Major Ryves.
Proposal criticised
But there was “considerable criticism” of the proposal of Ryves, as noted by water expert and former Cauvery Technical Cell chairman A. Mohanakrishnan (1926-2017), in his seminal piece, History of the Periyar Dam with Century Long Performance, published by the Central Board of Irrigation and Power in February 1997. Around 1870, another engineer, R. Smith, took the project forward.
Though Smith’s proposals were initially approved, the then Chief Engineer in the PWD, General Walker, had objected to the method of “silting process” for raising the dam. The Hindu, in its report on October 14, 1895, published at the time of the commissioning of the dam, records that Smith submitted a modified scheme in 1872 and four years later, he and Pennycuick gave a joint report, accompanied by a separate report prepared by the latter, proposing a masonry dam instead of an earthen dam.
The Madras government had also referred the matter to the Central government, which concluded that the experience of engineers in India in the construction of irrigation structures “must far exceed” that of engineers in any other country. Meanwhile, a back-to-back severe famine hit the State in 1876-77, delaying the launch of the project. Perhaps, the authorities took so long to go ahead with the construction of the dam because the project was a trendsetter, envisaging the inter-basin transfer of water. Also, there was a view that except French engineers, others did not have any knowledge of large masonry dams.
Eventually, by an order of May 8, 1882, Pennycuick was entrusted with the task of revising the plans and estimates for the project. Thus began his total involvement in the project.
Deal on the dam
Meanwhile, the erstwhile Madras and Travancore governments struck a deal on the construction of the dam and signed an agreement on October 29, 1886. As part of the agreement which would be valid for 999 years, about 8,000 acres of land was leased out by Travancore to Madras for the Periyar dam project.
The dam was built of lime and surki. Its cost was put at ₹84.71 lakh (towards capital expenditure), according to Mackenzie. The full reservoir level is 152 feet with a capacity of 10.56 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft). Nearly 70,000 hectares of land forms part of the irrigation network.
In October 1895, the then Governor [Beilby Lawley] commissioned the dam in the presence of the dam’s architect and his wife, reports The Hindu. It added that Pennycuick “made an excellent speech and spoke in high terms of the devotion to duty” of engineers who had worked for the project. On October 12, 1958, the then Chief Minister, K. Kamaraj, switched on the first unit of the Periyar hydro power plant (originally 35 MW and later increased to 42 MW).
Fourteen days later, the then Chairman of the now-defunct Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, S.K. Chettur (who was the Chief Secretary during 1962-64), wrote in this newspaper that “Col. Pennycuick could never have visualised the epoch-making development by which the waters which he designed to harness only for irrigation are now being made to subserve the generation of electricity.”
Since late 1970s, the dam became a bone of contention between Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where the dam is located (in Idukki district), over the issue of safety. In the 1980s and 1990s, measures were implemented to strengthen the dam. In February 2006 and May 2014, the Supreme Court concluded that the dam was safe and allowed water to be stored up to 142 feet (from 136 feet that the level was reduced to in 1979 following the row over the safety).
In fact, while giving its ruling nine years ago, the court relied on a number of studies done by different agencies such as the Central Water and Power Research Station and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. It held that “it is important to bear in mind that the Mullaperiyar dam has been consistently found to be safe, first, by the Expert Committee, and, then, by this court in the 2006 judgment.
The hydrological, structural and seismic safety of the Mullaperiyar dam has been confirmed by the EC [Empowered Committee formed in 2010] as well.” There could not be a better tribute to the quality of the work achieved by Pennycuick.
It is no surprise that the architect’s descendants have been visiting the dam and the Cumbum Valley over the last 50 years.
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