Yettinahole commissioning augurs well

The commissioning of the first stage of the Yettinahole Integrated Drinking Water Project on September 6 is a good augury for the water-starved regions of southern Karnataka. The project is first in the series of schemes conceived to lift water from the west-flowing rivers and divert them to areas east of the heights of the Western Ghats. It was designed to provide 24.01 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) of drinking water to 6,657 villages across 27 taluks and 56 Assembly segments and filling of 257 minor irrigation tanks.

The scheme’s uniqueness lies in lifting water from west-flowing streams which run off to the Arabian Sea after travelling over only a short distance thereby leading to waste of the precious liquid. Diversion of this huge quantity of water to eastern regions of peninsular India would quench the massive thirst for drinking water . While the first stage project has taken a decade since it was initiated, the completion of the second stage will be awaited keenly as it promises to take the water by gravity feeder canals to Kolar and Srinivaspur, perpetually water starved taluks of the State.

The success of the first phase of the project should spur more such schemes across the length of the Western Ghats which runs through six states from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu to the southern extremity of Gujarat. The Ghats that stretch over 1,600 kilometres embrace as much as 160,000 square kilometre of area. The monsoon precipitation over the hills feeds all the major rivers and streams that cover the area between them and the Bay of Bengal over the peninsula. It could thus be termed a major rainwater harvest project which seeks to tap the rain run off to Arabian Sea and divert it for use over a wider territory much in need for domestic use, farming and animal husbandry