Monday, February 05, 2007

Cauvery Water War

River cauvery connects Karnataka and Tamilnadu (TN), which we have made reason for major disconnect. Bangalore, silicon capital of India will come to a standstill for this week because of protests against verdict by Cauvery Water Tribunal, a central authority to decide how River Cauvery's water should be distributed.
The reason i am writing on it is because i was touched :-) by the protests and moved by the information that all news channel were presenting. I felt as if not the cream of this country goes to these TV companies. I just could not understand the numbers, they were not even adding up properly. Today i got some clarity. So let me present it the way i understood.

How big are the states?

TN area = 130,058 Km2
TN population (2001) = 62,405,679

for more, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_Nadu

Karnataka area = 192,000 km2
Karnataka population(2004) = 55,868,200

for more, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka

What are the water sources?

Karnataka
-----------

Rain, Groundwater and Surface Water avaliability.


Rain is erratic.

There are seven river systems in the State viz., Krishna, Cauvery, Godavari, West Flowing Rivers, North Pennar, South Pennar and Palar.
Utilization of water in the West Flowing Rivers is hampered due to difficulties in construction of large storage reservoirs. Yield in the seven river basins is estimated as 3418 TMC at 50% dependability.

Availability of ground water is estimated as 485 TMC. It is not exploited uniformly in the state.

TN
----

Tamilnadu has just one river - cauvery. But it has been accused of not using ground water.

What is tribunal's order?

Cauvery river flowing thorugh Karnataka would give 270 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) and release 192 TMC to Tamilnadu. Tamilnadu would use 182TMC from it and let 10TMC be for enviroment purpose. Tamilnadu will, in addition use 237 TMC of water that the river collects while in TN.

So here is the final table,

Karnataka - 270 TMC
Tamilnadu - 419
Kerala - 30
Puducherry- 7
For Environment protection - 10
Inevitable escapage into sea - 4

Total 740 TMC

This water is split in such a way that maximum of 50TMC is released in August and minimum is relased (2.5) is released in Feb, Mar, April, May. June is 10TMC.

More

Read some more here :

http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/staff/pelkey/cauvery.htm
http://www.geocities.com/tamiltribune/98/0301.html
http://www.geocities.com/tamiltribune/98/0201.html

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