DROUGHT — COASTAL KARNATAKA. The hills are far from alive

Whenever new projects along the Western Ghats are announced, coastal Karnataka’s environmental activists are wary of the repercussions for the region.

Any change in the Western Ghats’ topography, they fear, will have a malefic impact on rainfall and on the rivers flowing through coastal Karnataka.

There is a close correlation between the Western Ghats section and the coastal part of Karnataka: a majority of the water requirements of coastal Karnataka are met by rivers that originate in the Western Ghats.

An estimated 87 per cent of the State is serviced by east-flowing rivers, and the remaining 13 per cent by west-flowing rivers that join the sea along coastal Karnataka.

Some of the rivers that originate in the Western Ghats section, serve coastal Karnataka and join the Arabian Sea are the Nethravathi, the Sharavathi, the Swarna, the Kali and many of their tributaries. Kodagu, Hassan, Chikmagalur and Shivamogga districts adjoin Karnataka’s coastal belt.

Dinesh Holla, coordinator of the Sahyadri Sanchaya (a forum of environmentalists) and who has been trekking in the Western Ghat region for the last two-and-a-half decades, says he witnessed a forest fire in the Ghats in January for the first time this year. Typically, forest fires break out only as late as in April, and the early onset bodes ill for the weather system, he fears

These forest fires will have a long-term impact on the 2018 monsoons, Holla says, noting that the grassland in the places from where the rivers originate have dried up. This leads to a decline in the water supply to the shola rainforest ranges downstream. This leads to water depletion in the catchment area.

Other ‘developmental’ activities such as hydel projects, road works, mining, construction of resorts, and forest encroachments are destroying the Western Ghats slowly, he says.

The consequences of the State government project to supply water from Yettinaholey stream in Sakleshpura taluk of Hassan district, which comes under the Western Ghats section, has unnerved many people in coastal Karnataka, especially Dakshina Kannada district.

The State government wants to derive water from various sources, including Yettinaholey steam, to recharge the groundwater resources in the rain-shadow areas of the southeastern parts of the State such as Chikballapur and Kolar.

This multi-crore project proposes to draw the runoff water of about 24 tmcft during the monsoon by constructing eight weirs, and by pumping water to the rain-shadow regions. Yettinaholey is one of the tributaries of west-flowing Nethravathi River, the lifeline of Dakshina Kannada district.

In fact, the detailed project report prepared by the Karnataka Neeravari Nigam Ltd had calculated the combined yield of 24 tmcft after considering the discharge measurements at the gauge station of the Netravathi river near Bantwal, and to the proportional area of individual catchments relative to the Netravathi catchment.

However, the State government recently announced the inclusion of Bantwal and Mangaluru taluks in Dakshina Kannada district in the list of drought-affected taluks in the State. Many environmental activists are alarmed as a major portion of the Nethravathi River passes through these taluks.

Experts feel that the project will affect water availability in the coastal region also. In an open letter to the Chief Minister in 2015, TV Ramachandra, the coordinator of Energy and Wetlands Research Group at the Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES) of the Indian Institute of Science, had said that the purpose of supplying water to the parched eastern region of Karnataka would not be met given the insufficient water yield in the catchment.

Another technical report, ‘Analysis of land surface temperature and rainfall with landscape dynamics in Western Ghats’ by scientists at the IISc noted that the forest area had decreased considerably along the Western Ghats over the past 10 years ( see table ).

“If we can’t protect the places where the rivers such as the Nethravathi’s tributaries originate, we will face a major disaster,” Holla says.