PALAKKAD: The Bharathapuzha is the second longest in Kerala after the Periyar. This year, the 209 km long riverbed is entirely dry, and hundreds of villages and town located on its banks in Palakkad, Malappuram and Thrissur districts are in caught in a water crisis.
Among the people here, it rekindles memories of the big drought of 2003. “That drought caused extensive havoc to agriculture and a severe shortage of drinking water. Now we are again seeing people running after water tanker and indebted farmers counting their losses,” says Dr P S Panicker, general secretary of an NGO, Jana Jagratha.
Along the course of the Bharathapuzha are a number of reservoirs, including the Malampuzha, Walayar, Mangalam, Pothundi, Meenakara, Chulliyar, Chitturpuzha regulator and Kanhirapuzha dams. In all of them the water level is way below the level at the same time last year.
Says Sudheer Padikkal, the deputy director of the Joint Water Regulatory Development Board (JWRDB), “As per the interstate river water sharing agreement, Tamil Nadu is not bound to release water from the Aliyar dam during the period from April 1 to May 15. But it agreed to release 75-100 cusecs (cubic meters per second) daily and has kept its promise over the past fortnight. This water is serving the 12 drinking water schemes built on the Chitturpuzha, a tributary of the Bharathapuzha. If the Bharathpuzha, which joins Chitturpuzha at Parli, is to also get water, it would need 400-500 cusecs to be released daily. This is simply not possible as there is no water in the Aliyar dam.”
“This drought has been so severe that the current level of water in the Malampuzha dam is 23.635 mm3 while it was 47.44 mm3 last year. About 8.9 mm3 of water was released in two tranches into the Bharathapuzha to serve Ottappalam and Shoranur. We will not be able to release any more water,” said an official of the Malampuzha irrigation department.
