Thiruvananthapuram: Was the deluge of 2018 god-made or dam-made? This was the major bone of contention during the eight-and-a-half-hour discussion held during the special Assembly session on Thursday.
The opposition held that it was the poor dam management of the irrigation department and the KSEB that created the disaster. They said major dams in Idukki, Pathanamthitta and Thrissur, 33 of them, were opened simultaneously. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, however, maintained that the unprecedented rain and inadequate warning by the Indian Meteorological Department had caused the havoc. Between August 8 and 19, the chief minister said the state had received an excess rainfall of 362 per cent.
Intriguing silence
Nearly 50 legislators, including ministers, took part in the debate. What raised eyebrows was the CPM decision not to give Raju Abraham and Saji Cherian a chance to speak. MLAs from far less affected areas spoke. At the height of the crisis, both the CPM legislators had issued statements that had put the Pinarayi
government in the dock. Equally intriguing was the silence of power minister M M Mani. Water resources minister Mathew T Thomas spoke, not Mani.
Damn the management
Congress MLA V D Satheesan, who led the opposition onslaught, described the alleged official failure as “criminal negligence”.
“You waited for the dams to fill up before releasing the waters. Dam management is all about controlled release of water,” Satheesan said. He said the government had both hydrological and meteorological data.
“You did not even follow the basic principle of not releasing water during high tide,” he said.
According to him, it was high tide by the time the released water reached the sea. “The water just came back to flood the plains,” he said. The chief minister, in his reply at the end, said the release of water from the Idukki dam on August 9 was timed to coincide with low tide. At this point, Satheesan intervened to say that it
was true only for August 9. “Tell me what happened later, during August 14 and the subsequent days,” Satheesan said.
The chief minister then kept aside his scientific explanation and took on a blunt tone. “When the water level in the reservoir is rising at an alarming rate, you cannot wait to check whether there is a high or low tide,” he said.
Extremely vague forecast
Satheesan's other argument, which was later repeated by opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, was that the state had failed to act despite being in possession of precise weather forecast from the IMD. “The IMD had said there would be heavy to very heavy rainfall from August 8 to 15. The government had time to go for a controlled release of water in various dams between August 15 and 20,” Satheesan said.
The chief minister pointed out the inadequacy of the IMD warning. “In their jargon, heavy rain is 7-11 cm, very heavy rain is 12-20 cm. Then there is a third category, extremely heavy rainfall, which is rainfall over 20cm,” Pinarayi Vijayan said. “The IMD has, not even once, given us an extremely heavy rainfall warning during August,” he said.
The IMD had predicted 'heavy to very heavy rainfall' after August 8. Between August 9 and 15, when the normal was 9.5cm, the state received 35.22cm rainfall. “When the IMD predicted very heavy rainfall, what the state actually received was extremely heavy rainfall,” the chief minister said.
During the 69 days between June 1 and August 8, the state received an excess rainfall of only 15 per cent. “In fact, during the first week of August, before the mighty deluge, there was a deficit of 38 per cent,” the chief minister said. “Then, mocking all prediction, there was a sudden surge in rainfall. Between August 9 and 15, the state received excess rainfall of 362 per cent. In Idukki the excess was 568 per cent. But all this while, the IMD prediction was of the ordinary variety,” the chief minister said.
Worst offender
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala was especially critical of the irrigation department. “This was the department that demonstrated the worst kind of negligence,” he said. Chennithala said though Kerala holds the chairmanship of the Joint Water Regulatory Committee, the department sat helpless as Tamil Nadu
released water from the dams under its control in Parambikulam-Aliyar scheme. Further, he said the excess water could not discharge itself into the sea because the Thottappilly spillway and Thanneermukkom barrage were not desilted. The irrigation department was also faulted for the sudden release of water from
the Malampuzha dam on the night of August 9.
Water resources minister Mathew T Thomas rebutted these charges. He said dredging works were already carried out at the Thottappilly spillway and Thanneermukkom barrage. “The water could not drain out into the sea not because of the silt but because the water level on the other side was almost the same,” the minister said.
He also argued that it was foolish to blame dams for the flood. The minister said the storage capacity of all the 16 dams of the irrigation department was just 1570.6 million cubic metres, just 2 per cent of the state's annual rainwater flow of 75,000 MCM. He also said the shutters of most of the dams and barrages of the department, including the one in Bhoothathankettu, were opened long before the floods.
Satheesan wanted to know the quantum of water that was discharged during the June-July period and the peak of the crisis. Satheesan was indirectly suggesting that the shutters, which were opened only slightly earlier, were lifted further up to discharge considerably large quantities of water during the middle of August. Mathew T Thomas did not have the data to give a finality to the official position.
Nonetheless, the minister said the levels to which the water had risen this year was lower than the levels reached during the 1924 floods. “We have marks on our structures that indicate the level to which the water had risen in 1924,” he said.
Mullaperiyar contradiction
Chennithala, Satheesan and Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan said the government's claim that it was the unprecedented rains that had caused the flood would weaken the state's case in the Mullaperiyar issue. “You have filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that it was the release of water from Mullaperiyar that had caused the flood. But in public you vociferously argue that the rains have
caused the flood. This will break the back of your argument in the Mullaperiyar case,” Satheesan said.
