Scheme to harness rivers to help UK, DK

MANGALORE JULY 10. One of the most ambitious and practical programmes of the State Government in recent years for improving the availability of water for drinking and irrigation is the harnessing of the West-flowing rivers in the coastal districts of Uttara Kannada, Udupi, and Dakshina Kannada.

This Rs. 145.5-crore project started in a modest way with the construction of a vented dam across the Nethravati. The dam was inaugurated on Sunday.

The programme encompassing a catchment area of 1.29 lakh hectares of arable land in these districts aims at irrigating 23,931 hectares of land.

It also has scope for supplying water in 17 taluks of the three districts, when all the 907 vented dams would be ready by the end of the Tenth Plan.

The project harnesses the waters of the rivers originating in the Western Ghats and joining the Arabian Sea after flowing for a distance less than 100 km.

Their catchment areas receive an annual rainfall of 4,000 mm., making the run of the rivers the fastest after those of the sub-Himalayan rivers in North India.

In Dakshina Kannada, the Kumaradhara, the Nethravati, the Shambhavi, the Payaswini, the Gurupur, and nearly 40 of their tributaries flow westward. The Varahi, the Chakra, the Seeta, the Swarna, the Kollur, the Udyavara, the Shambhavi, and the Pangala in Udupi, and the Kaali, the Gangavali, the Aghanashini, the Badagane, the Sharavathi, and the Venkatapura in Uttara Kannada flow westward.

The project hopes to harness the waters of these 19 rivers through a unique network and series of vented dams, which will augment water during the monsoon.

The vented dams will be constructed to hold maximum water without being very tall.

Since they will be built in a series, each of them will be complementary to the other situated downstream.

The project which was announced here some time ago by the former Minister of State for Water Resources, Kumar Bangarappa, will raise the groundwater level considerably making the catchment area of each of the dams a huge watershed.