ERODE: While people were celebrating Aadi Perukku (Aadi 18) festival and worshiping the Cauvery river, Tamil Nadu Agriculturists Federation (TNAF) strongly flayed the government for wasting over six to eight TMC of Cauvery water into the sea by not arranging proper storage facilities.
Talking to Express on Friday, Federation President Lawyer C Nallasamy said that the government failed to argue effectively in the SC to force Karnataka to release water on day-to-day basis without storing TN’s quota of water in its dams unnecessarily.
If such an argument was made, then Karnataka would have released water on a daily basis and TN could have got its due share for the Mettur dam. This could have also facilitated release of water from June 12 itself for kuruvai paddy cultivation in the delta districts.
Due to its failure, Karnataka released water at a time once its dams started overflowing recently, he opined, adding that the state released 131 TMC continuously for the last month while Tamil Nadu’s quota was only 31 TMC. In this scenario, the surplus water, around six to eight TMC, was let out into the sea while the farmers were left deprived of their share. If the State had maintained proper storage facilities, such wastage could have been averted, he said.
Karnataka CM’s plan for new dam at Mekedatu hailed
Nallasamy welcomed Chief Minister Kumarasamy’s proposal to construct a new reservoir at Mekedatu across the Cauvery river, claiming that it would help both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to check wasting water into the sea after filling up Mettur and Bhavanisagar dams.
As his intention is to save water, the Centre should come forward to construct the dam and help the states to generate power from it. The dam should be under the sole control of the Centre, he added.Rejecting environmentalists’ view that blocking river water’s flow into sea would affect environment and marine lives, he said that there is no need to waste water into sea, as it can get its share through rain and other sources.