Here's a project that holds little water

It doesn’t take much of hair-splitting to find faults with projects of the Karnataka government. Many of these are replete with glaring loopholes, and are often done without even token transparency. The Rs8,323 crore Yettinahole diversion project is one such. It may not qualify as a “scam”, but prima facie it certainly is one.

It was only after the project report was obtained under the Right to Information Act (RTI) by activist Kishore Kumar Hongadhalla that the scale of ecological devastation that the project would cause came to light. What shocked environmentalists was that the project was purported to be a drinking water supply scheme to supply 24 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) water to Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts. However, the scheme involves construction of as many as eight dams in the Western Ghat forests, 250 km long canals, a reservoir that will submerge 1,200 hectares of land and two villages, and last but not least, will require a huge 370 MW of electricity simply to pump the water.

Conservationists and environmental activists immediately shot off a letter to the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) urging for a fresh appraisal of the project.

A detailed analysis of the project report by the South Asian Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) revealed that the project had escaped environmental impact assessment, did not have an environmental management plan, and had not even conducted public hearings. This is because, according to the EIA notification of 2006, drinking water projects are exempt from appraisal and environmental clearances. The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the MoEF on River Valley Projects concluded that it was a drinking water scheme. Yet, it was the manner in which the project had circumvented laws and procedures that was more shocking than the project itself.
According to SANDRP and other conservationists/activists who wrote to the MoEF, the project needs a fresh appraisal for two reasons.

First, the project aims to supply water to 337 minor irrigation tanks and zilla parishad tanks in Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts. The command areas of these tanks is 29,182 hectares. Since this is more than a command area of 10,000 hectares; it becomes a Category A project and comes under the purview of EIA Notification 2006.

Second, the project report claims that it can generate 125-150 MW of power through gravity canals (even location details have been brazenly made available in the project report). Since this is higher than the exempt limit of 25 MW, even on this count the project should come under the purview of EIA Notification 2006.

Both these contentions are being highlighted as proof that the project is based on lies. This allegation stems from minutes of the EAC meeting of October 2012 which recorded, “The project neither proposes any hydro-electric power generation component nor comprises of any irrigation component and thus has no command area.” The two counter-points being provided are, in fact, culled out from the project report itself.

A closer look reveals problems galore with the project.

The purpose of this scheme has been stated as drinking water supply to Kolar and Chikkaballapur districts. However, analysis of the project report indicates that drinking water to be supplied to the two districts will be a bare 2.81 TMC or 11.7 per cent of the 24.01 TMC diverted. If water is supplied to Bangalore (Urban) as has been asserted in the state Budget (but not the project report itself), then water supplied to Kolar and Chikkaballapur will be even less, possibly nil.

In Karnataka Budget Part I of February 2012, Rs200 crore were allocated for making the detailed project report (DPR) and initial works. Money was also sanctioned in the 2013-14 Budget for lift works up to Harvanahalli in Sakaleshpura. All these allocations were made without a DPR, cost-benefit assessment, options assessment or environmental and social appraisal of the scheme, not to talk of any statutory clearances. The SANDRP critique felt this was problematic since this energy intensive project will have profound impact on Western Ghats biodiversity, wildlife and livelihoods.

Just the water element of the project itself raises many questions. On the face of it, the scheme is about diverting only the floodwaters of these rivers. However, the yield of all the rivers at 50 per cent dependability between June and November is 28.94 TMC, out of which 24.01 TMC will be diverted. This leaves just 4.93 TMC for the downstream. This becomes maximum diversion of the rivers and not just ‘floodwaters’ or overflow.

According to the SANDRP analysis, these are monsoon-fed rivers. The only source of water for these rivers is the monsoon, which also replenishes groundwater, and constitutes the base flow in the non-monsoon months. The diversion during monsoon will have a huge impact on water availability in non-monsoon months too in these rivers and which, in turn, will have an adverse impact on biodiversity and livelihoods.

But none of these were apparently on the minds of those who had drafted the project report. And now that the cat is out of the bag, it remains to be seen whether the new Congress regime in the state will want to scrap its bete noire’s pet project (this project was planned by the earlier Bharatiya Janata Party regime.