Centre urged to clear decks for increasing Almatti dam height by notifying Krishna tribunal’s second award

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah seeks Union government approval to increase Almatti dam height for additional water allocation.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has urged the Union government to clear the decks for increasing the height of the Almatti dam by issuing a notification of the award of Justice Brijesh Kumar Krishna River Water Disputes Tribunal, enabling the riparian States to utilise additional allocation of waters.

“In its second award, the tribunal has allocated us 130 tmcft of additional water. To utilise this, we need to increase the height of the dam to 524.25 metres from the present 519.6 metres. All that work, including the tasks of land acquisition, rehabilitation, and resettlement, is estimated to cost around ₹1 lakh crore. We plan to spend this money at around ₹20,000 crore per year, over five years. However, the work on this can start only after the Union government issues the notification. We have already met the Prime Minister and the Ministers concerned with this request. We will meet them again,” he told reporters at Almatti.

Earlier, he, accompanied by Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and Vijayapura district in-charge Minister M.B. Patil, offered bagina (a traditional thanksgiving) to the Krishna at the dam.

He said comprehensive details of the project would be worked out after a meeting of people’s representatives from all the riparian districts. “The Centre should hold a meeting of all the riparian States — Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana —to resolve differences,” he said.

“Krishna water is being provided to 16.47 lakh acres of land under the allocation of 173 tmcft as per the first award. An additional 14.68 lakh acres will be covered when the second award is implemented,” he said.

“We are confident that the Tungabhadra dam, which lost water due to a problem in one of its gates, will be full in the next few weeks,” Mr. Siddharamaiah said.

“Due to the unfortunate incident of the damage to one of the gates, the reservoir lost around 35 tmcft of water. The total capacity of the reservoir is around 130 tmcft, but the live capacity is 105 tmcft. Now the reservoir has around 70 tmcft. If around 20 tmcft of water flows into the reservoir, it will have 95% water. That will be sufficient for irrigation,” he said. He thanked the team of Kanhaiah Naidu and Irrigation Department engineers for fixing the gate.