SHIMOGA: Members of various environmental organisations have opposed the attempts to revive the Upper Bhadra Project terming it as "unscientific" and "anti-environment".

Talking to presspersons here on Friday, K.P. Sripal of the Namma Hakku Vedike, Anil Kumar of Civil Liberties, Manjula of the Save Tunga-Bhadra Action Plan and K.L. Ashok, an environmental activist, said the proposed plan of the Upper Bhadra Project envisaged the construction of a dam across the Bhadra at Magundi in Chikmagalur with the storage capacity of 16

tmcft and another dam in the downstream at Tegadagudda with the storage of 4.9 tmcft to provide 23 tmcft of water to 3.5 lakh acres of land in Chitradurga district.

The previous Government had accorded administrative approval to the Rs. 2,813-crore project, which, they said, was not only "unscientific" but also "detrimental" to the ecology of the verdant Malnad region.

Explaining how the proposed project is harmful to the Western Ghats, they said it is likely to destroy nearly 8,500 acres of forestland in the Malnad region, reduce rainfall drastically, pose a threat to the flora and fauna in the Muttodi and Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary as its 75-km canal and tunnel would pass through it.

They said the fact that the Bhadra Reservoir near Lakkavalli filled up hardly four times since it was constructed only showed the uncertainty of the rainfall in its catchment area.

"When the existing reservoir itself does not receive enough inflow to fill it up every year, how the construction of another irrigation project in the upstream could be feasible and justifiable?" they asked.

Besides, they said there is the problem of silt formation in the reservoir in the absence of an effective technology to remove silt to improve the reservoir's storage capacity.

The environmentalists said that they are aware of the problem of drinking water being faced by the people of Chitradurga district.

Solution

The only lasting solution to it is to think in terms of evolving a comprehensive alternative irrigation scheme for the district, including removing silt from the existing tanks and taking up rainwater harvesting.

They said the Malnad region, which has seen submersion of rich forest area owing to construction of several power and irrigation projects, is hardly in a position to bear the adverse impact of the new project.

They appealed to the Government to give up the project immediately without yielding to any political pressure.

They said the news of the proposed revival of the Upper Bhadra Project has come as a shock to the people of the Malnad region even as the Western Ghats has been exposed to threats in one way or the other following the construction of the Kudremukh Iron Ore Compaly Ltd. (KIOCL) which has been polluting the Bhadra by allegedly releasing effluents, the opening of the Kudremukh National Park, etc.

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