The southern areas of the Kaveri basin reported a 28% rainfall deficiency and central areas 22%, according to the India Meteorological Department (IMD). But August recorded a 102% “large excess”.

“The amount of rainfall that Karnataka receives over four months was received in two months this time,” said Sekhar Muddu, professor, Department of Civil Engineering & Interdisciplinary Centre for Water Research (ICWaR), at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.

Precipitation anomaly in the Kaveri basin, June 2019. Credit: Raj Bhagat Palanichamy

Precipitation anomaly in the Kaveri basin, July 2019. Credit: Raj Bhagat Palanichamy

Precipitation anomaly in the Kaveri basin, August 2019. Credit: Raj Bhagat Palanichamy

“June and July pointed at drought-like situations for the Kaveri,” said Raj Bhagat Palanichamy, a GIS (geographic information system) and remote sensing analyst with World Resources Institute (WRI), India. “And a single event [rainfall in August] filled all the dams in the basin.

Farmers cannot be prepared for such extremes.”

Core catchment areas, Kodagu and Hassan, saw a huge fluctuation, he added. These sharp spikes were “problematic because the river originates in this area and its impacts are felt across the basin”, he said.

The rainfall anomaly in the Kaveri basin is part of a larger trend where climate change, along with factors such as rampant deforestation and developmental activities, results in spells of torrential rain interspersed with unusually dry periods. This rainfall pattern is affecting lives and livelihood in other parts of India as well, as IndiaSpend reported in May 2019 from Rajasthan.

Extreme rain events over central India tripled between 1950 and 2015, according to a 2017 study led by researchers at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, affecting about 825 million people, leaving 17 million homeless and killing about 69,000, as IndiaSpend reported in August 2018.

Low soil moisture in June, July

The Kaveri basin extends over an 85,000-sq km region–roughly 2.5% of the country’s total geographical area–and comprises areas that feed the river and its tributaries. The basin supports around 50 million people and irrigates an area of about 81,155 sq km across Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

The main reservoirs in the basin are Harangi, Kabini, Hemavathi and Krishna Raja Sagara (KRS) in Karnataka and Mettur and Bhavani in Tamil Nadu.

The Kaveri Basin. Credit: India Water Portal

Around 66% of the Kaveri basin is covered by agricultural land, extending largely between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Overall, the Kaveri basin recorded a 5% excess rainfall this monsoon. All the reservoirs in the Karnataka part of the basin were at full capacity as on September 19, 2019, according to the Central Water Commission (CWC).

“The planting season for kharif crops in the Karnataka part of the basin begins between May and July. But in many places, the soil moisture content during this time was very low,” said Muddu of ICWaR. This content shows the spread of moisture across the region and is indicative of current rainfall patterns.

Soil moisture in June 2019. Credit: Sekhar Muddu

Soil moisture in July 2019. Credit: Sekhar Muddu

Soil moisture in August 2019. Credit: Sekhar Muddu

“June and July were very dry,” said Shantakumar, president of the State Farmers’ Federation, a collective of farmer welfare organisations in Karnataka. “Our farmers did not cultivate crops during these months.”

Sowing of crops like paddy, sugarcane and ragi was thus pushed to end-August across Mandya, Mysore, Chamarajnagar, Madikeri and Hassan. “Because of late cultivation, there was a loss of yield of about 25%,” he said.

Vegetation anomaly in June 2019. Credit: Raj Bhagat Palanichamy

Vegetation anomaly in July 2019. Credit: Raj Bhagat Palanichamy

Mature crops were affected too

Delayed rainfall also affected crops that were planted during earlier seasons.

“A lot of the sugarcane that was planted last year and was ready for harvest around June dried up because there was no rainfall,” said K S Sudhir Kumar, a farmer from Mandya, who is also the secretary of Akhanda Karnataka Rajya Raita Sangha, a farmers’ association. “And because we did not see any rainfall, we did not plant crops for the next season [June and July, 2019].”

In Tamil Nadu’s Kaveri basin areas, since the state receives its rainfall largely between October and December, it is too early to make an assessment, Muddu said. Though the current soil moisture maps show low moisture content over the Kaveri basin in Tamil Nadu, this may not signify an impending drought or poor yield because the state’s agriculture banks largely on the October-December rainfall, he explained.

The heavy August rainfall caused flooding in certain farmlands and many farmers also lost their homes, Shantakumar said. Around 76 people died in Karnataka in these floods, according to latest reports.

While the heavy downpour during August filled many reservoirs to capacity, it did not alleviate the groundwater stress caused by deficient rainfall in the two preceding months.

Loss of vegetation cover and climate change

“Climate change, along with loss of vegetational cover, is causing flash floods and this is preventing rainwater from seeping into the ground,” said T V Ramachandra, coordinator for the Energy and Wetlands Research Group, IISc. “For any catchment to retain water, green cover is needed.”

Vegetation, especially that comprising native species, allows water to percolate. “And this is how groundwater gets recharged,” Ramachandra explained. “So, when the monsoons recede, the water stored in these underground layers will flow into rivers and streams and this is how we get water throughout the year.”

Vegetational cover across the basin had declined over the last few decades, Ramachandra added. “The green cover over the Kaveri basin was 20% in 1965. Today it is around 13%,” he said. The Kaveri basin had 35,020 sq km of dense vegetation cover in 1965. This stood reduced to 22,747.17 sq km as of 2016, according to the analysis conducted by Ramachandra and his team.

The amount of degraded vegetational cover over the same area has also decreased from 21,369 sq km to 7,915.91 sq km between 1965 and 2016, the team concluded.

Note: Figures in sq km

“Catchment integrity is crucial in managing a river basin,” Ramachandra said. “Firstly, we need to maintain green cover–with native species–over catchment areas. Secondly, there is water mismanagement because of inappropriate cropping patterns–the growing of sugarcane over dry areas that could previously only support the production of millets, pulses and groundnuts.”

“Climate change is aggravating the problems that are caused by these factors,” Ramachandra said.
(Pardikar is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru.)

Courtesy: India Spend

The post Erratic Monsoon, Driven By Climate Change, Damaged 25% Crops In Karnataka’s Kaveri Basin appeared first on SabrangIndia.

About 51% of 156 thermal plants across 12 states whose data could be obtained declared themselves compliant with water norms early this year, said the RTI response received by the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, a research centre that analyses water and energy issues in India.
This excessive water consumption is causing water stress, we explain later, which affects households, farms and industries in the plant’s neighbourhood. It is also resulting in the shut-down of the thermal plants. Upto 40% of India’s thermal plants are located in areas facing acute water shortages, according to an analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI), and are worsening the water crisis there. In this analysis, WRI has categorised ‘thermal power plants’ as those where steam is generated and water cooling is needed. This would include coal, oil, biomass and nuclear. In total, India has 399 such plants.

About 600 million Indians live with “high-to-extreme water stress”, where over 40% of annually available surface water is used every year, according to a 2018 study by government think-tank Niti Aayog, as IndiaSpend reported on June 25, 2018. 

Upto 19% of the remaining plants declared themselves noncompliant, as per the RTI responses. The others either did not supply any data or offered insufficient information. Some plants were found shut. Also, 14 plants reported using sea water which exempts them from complying with water norms.

Source: Response to right to information requests, received by the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra

As of August 30, 2019, there were 269 thermal power plants in India, according to the Central Electricity Authority. Taken together, these plants consume 87.8% of the total amount of water consumed by the industrial sector, according to a study conducted by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). To put this in perspective, such amounts of water could fulfil the water needs of four cities for two days.

Renewable energy units cause far less water stress: Solar plants, for example, consume only a fraction of the water used by thermal plants, as we explain later, and wind energy does not need any water at all.

The detailed RTI response and its analysis have been documented in a report released by Manthan on July 1, 2019. Manthan had sought but did not receive information from West Bengal, Karnataka and Rajasthan.

Two-way problem of water stress and power shortages

Thermal power plants in India use water for cooling purposes and the disposal of fly ash, a byproduct in combustion processes.

“The usage of conventional technologies like burning coal to generate power requires large quantities of water,” said Shripad Dharmadhikary, founder of Manthan Adhyayan Kendra. “This is the first problem. Secondly, we do this [the production of thermal power] inefficiently.”

This excessive water use creates two interlinked problems: Thermal power plants affect water security and are, in turn, affected by the non-availability of water, said Shresth Tayal, a fellow with TERI. “The energy security of the country cannot be achieved without water security,” he said.

Between 2013-17, 61 coal plants were shut down because of water shortages, resulting in a loss of 17,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity, according to a report by the Institute for Energy  Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) that conducts research and analysis on financial and economic issues related to energy and the environment. “National Thermal Power Corporation’s Super Thermal Power Plant in Farakka, West Bengal and Rihand Super Thermal Power Project in Uttar Pradesh, Parali Thermal Power Plant in Maharashtra, Raichur Thermal Power Plant in Karnataka and Ennore Thermal Power Station in Tamil Nadu are all located in water-stressed areas and have been shut-down because of water storages,” said Deepak Krishnan, manager with the energy programme at the WRI, India.

Water consumption limits raised

Until December 2015, there were no norms to monitor water usage of thermal power plants. Then, on December 7, 2015, the Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) issued a notification which declared that old plants could use 3.5 cubic metres of water per megawatt-hour and those installed after January 1, 2017 could use 2.5 cubic metres of water per megawatt-hour.

In October 2017, the government eased the water consumption norms for even plants that started operations on or after January 1, 2017–they are now allowed to consume up to 20% more water than permitted earlier. Passed as amendments to the Environment (Protection) Rules, 1986, the new rules allow plants to use up to 3 cubic metres per megawatt-hour. This additional amount is enough to irrigate 700 hectares of land a year.

The average water requirement of coal-based plants with cooling towers is about 5-7 cubic metres of water per megawatt-hour, according to the NITI Aayog. “In terms of installed capacity and water consumed per megawatt-hour of electricity generated, coal plants are the biggest consumers of water among thermal plants,” Dharmadhikary explained.

“There are technologies like dry cooling systems that have been employed in countries like South Africa and Australia that can be used to improve water efficiency,” Tayal said. “Plants that use this technology use as less as 0.5 to 1 cubic metres of water per unit of electricity generated. But the point is, dry cooling reduces the efficiency of the plant in terms of electricity production. So, we have to strike a balance between electricity and water efficiency.”

Effect on local communities

Efficient alternatives have become important also because thermal power plants put other water consumers–households, farming communities and other industries located in the area–at risk. There have been at least four cases where local communities were or still are in danger of losing sufficient access to water for household use or farming because of the water strain imposed by local thermal power plants or proposed thermal power plant projects in the area, as per latest data gathered by Land Conflict Watch since 2017. There are also four other cases where concerns were reported of water contamination by thermal power plants.
 

Source: Land Conflict Watch
 

Source: Land Conflict Watch

The rate at which thermal power plants are gulping water will only increase in the coming years, according to this WRI paper. Thermal plants and other water consumers like farms, households and other industries located in the same watershed will end up competing for the water, it predicted.

Lack of transparency, accountability

Till date, compliances–or lack thereof–with water consumption regulations are self-reported by individual power plants.

“There is no real monitoring,” Dharmadhikary said. “The SPCBs [State Pollution Control Boards] are only receiving the data filed by the power plants.” The responsibility to monitor water consumption norms also rests on the MoEFCC in the case of plants it clears, he added. “The conditions based on which the clearance was granted should be monitored by the regional offices of the ministry,” he said.

Self-disclosures could also be made more robust to include baseline information like water consumed in the previous year. This information can be used to make comparisons with other data offered by verifiable evidence (water bills, for example) to support and substantiate the disclosures, WRI suggested.

A more wholesome solution, though, is to switch to renewable sources of energy, as we mentioned earlier.

Solar is a water-saving alternative. Consider this: a 1-megawatt (MW) thermal plant operating at full capacity for a year would produce 8,760 MW per hour of electricity while consuming 22,688 cubic metres of water [assumption or 2.59 cubic metres of water per megawatt-hour], explained Krishnan. But five solar plants of 1 MW capacity each, operating at 20% capacity utilisation factor, would consume 876 cubic metres of water per megawatt-hour to produce 8,760 MW per hour of electricity.

“Compared to cooling technology advancement or plant efficiency enhancement, transitioning to more solar photovoltaic [technology to convert sunlight into electricity by using semiconductors] and wind generation is the only pathway at scale that can cut back both water withdrawal and consumption while sustaining growth in power generation,” a WRI report stated last year.

We emailed and telephoned the MoEFCC and the Central Pollution Control Board four times over the last 10 days for comments on the RTI response and the kind of actions, if any, being taken to ensure that water consumption norms are being met. This story will be updated if and when their responses are received.

(Pardikar is a freelance journalist from Bengaluru.)

Courtesy: India Spend

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