Expert: New dam will help Tamil Nadu, Kerala

Jan 01, 2012 - Rashme Sehgal |

Age Correspondent

New Delhi

India’s foremost dam expert, Prof. T. Shivaji Rao, believes the 116-year old Mullaperiyar dam has overlived its life and the only solution for both Tamil Nadu and Kerala is to agree to build a new dam located 300 metres downstream of the present one.

“The original British engineers who had constructed the dam anticipated its lifespan to be 50 years and it has already extended its life by almost 70 decades,” said Prof. Rao.
The other matter of concern is that the Mullaperiyar dam is located on an earthquake seismic highway and unexpectedly heavy rainfall can aggravate matters. To this effect, Prof. Rao has advised the Kerala state government to conduct an “airborne magneto meter surveys to try and identify emerging hidden faults that can trigger large earthquakes. One such survey was conducted by the US geological survey for protecting the townships of Portland Vancouver in the USA,” he pointed out.
Prof. Rao, who was a member of the dam expert safety committee which reviewed the safety of both the Tehri dam and the Sardar Sarovar dam and is currently heading the Centre for Environmental Studies, GITAM University in Visakhapatnam, having specialised in both irrigation and environmental engineering, believes a “new cement concrete dam built with existing technologies will ensure higher water allocation than what is being made available today.”
“The new dam can be at a height of 154 feet and not 136 feet as is being demanded by Kerala,” said Prof. Rao, who insisted depriving Tamil Nadu of water was an unacceptable solution. But as a first step, the Central government needs to create a corporation like the Tehri Hydro Corporation in UP or the Sardar Sarovar Corporation in Gujarat to be able to deal with an interstate multipurpose project. According to experts, sudden floods of 19,000 cusecs to 1,20,000 cusecs are constantly occurring in Periyar river which means that inflows will be 1 to 11 TMC per day. “This peak flooding can have a detrimental effect given that the Periyar dam is already in a poor shape.”

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