Water Initiative Odisha (WIO) convenor Ranjan Panda has demanded transparency in a recent move to dig extra spillways for flood control in the Hirakud dam. A high level committee has been doing surveys and soon a proposal will be finalised how to construct the spillways, said sources. However, Panda said, “We have our doubts about this process because of the secrecy that is being maintained on the survey and the proposal,” urging the Government to immediately make the process open so that people can know if there is any possibility of submergence of agricultural land and displacement of people due to the spillways construction.
Panda said, the dam has utterly failed in controlling flood in the river Mahanadi and the very design of the dam is responsible for that. In fact, a dam that was originally built to check floods in coastal Odisha is now causing floods in western Odisha as well. “Sambalpur flood control which is being proposed as one of the main objectives of this spillways construction is actually a creation of the Hirakud dam.
We are now experiencing regular floods in Sambalpur for mismanagement of the dam,” informed Panda. Ever since industries were allocated water in a non-transparent manner from the reservoir, the flood management capacity of the dam has been further failed by the authorities. Now, we are not sure what kind of a proposal they are going to come up with.
“However, looking at the ground realities and the ways things have gone so far with management of the Hirakud dam, we apprehend these spillways are just an attempt to divert some amount of flood waters so as to fill water needs of the industrial houses that have not been harvesting rainwater despite of Government instructions,” Panda maintained.
The water activist also questioned as to why water projects in the State are being carried on with World Bank loans. “We would also like to ask the Government as to why it is going for loans from World Bank for water projects while it has failed to recover water tax and penalties from industries worth thousands of crores of rupeesIJ Panda said. He suggested that instead of investing further in Hirakud dam, which is already ageing and whose storage capacity is reduced by more than one third, the Government should now invest in checking flood waters at feeder basin levels.