A wave of hysteria and fear has gripped four districts of Kerala as panic has risen along with water levels in the 115-year-old Mullaperiyar dam. To make things worse, some politicians waded in to stir parochial passions over the dam that’s on the border of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. On Monday, water levels in Mullaperiyar, that’s been the concern since the release of the Dam999 movie scripting a hydel disaster, rose to 136.4 feet, crossing the permissible limit of 136 ft fixed by the Supreme Court. There have been torrential downpours in the catchment area for a couple of days and the area has been rocked by mild tremors, ratcheting up anxiety levels among the people and the administration. Kerala has demanded that the old dam be replaced with a new one. “The tremors that hit Idukki over the weekend are a classic example of reservoir-driven seismicity. This will continue for some more time and the data needs to be analyzed as Idukki has become active after being dormant for a long time,” said C P Rajendran, palaeo-seismologist, Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore. “Everyone is in fear. Even if people hear the sound of a vehicle going by, they rush out of their houses onto the road,” said Abdul Rasheed, a leader of Mullaperiyaer Residents Council. “We are unable to sleep due to fear,” he said. TN against building new dam as 5 districts dependent on Mullaperiyar.
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It is notable that Tamil Nadu has not completed the construction of spillways even after several years. The spillway capacity is very important from the point of dam safety for as many as 50 per cent of dam failures in the World1 had resulted from inadequate capacity of the spillways. Tamil Nadu not only neglected this aspect, but also took certain measures that further jeopardised the dam’s safety. It allowed excavated materials to be dumped upstream of the spillways, that too to the level of the spillways.
There have been more than 200 notable reservoir failures in 20th century in
the world (source CENTRAL WATER COMMISSION DAM SAFETY ORGANISATION,1986)
dams may survive 50 years or sometimes fail in 1 year too. Many cases reported in India itself where dams failed within first 5 yrs.
We are wagering with the lives of people to protect an archaic dam and the potatoes that can be cultivated using the water.
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