Panel Pours Cold Water on Industrialisation Spr

BHUBANESWAR: At a time when there is growing opposition to diversion of Mahanadi water for industrial use, the recommendations of the Expert Committee on Revenue Enhancing Measures have come as a dampener for the Government’s industrialisation drive.   Though many of the proposed industries will have to depend on Mahanadi and other rivers for their water requirement, the committee maintains the priorities for the use of water need to be clearly specified and acted upon. The allocation committee will have to look into this aspect and scale down the allocation to industries and independent power producers (IPPs) in years of water scarcity.  In the years of scanty rainfall, the reservoir level goes deep down hampering irrigation and the farmers with inadequate flow in the canals, it added. In the tail-end of the canal system, the committee says, farmers get little water in the years of low rainfall while major industries and IPPs compete with the farmers and other users (domestic needs, drinking water and livestock). The committee has recommended that in years of scarcity, the water rate for industries and IPPs should be doubled.  “Water rate is a rent scarce resource and therefore, in the years of relative scarcity, water rate for industrial use should at least be doubled,” the report adds. Besides, there is heavy draw down of sub-soil water in those years and water level in the running streams also gets reduced considerably.  Such scarcity of natural resource calls for a stiff rate of rent for its use by industrial and commercial establishments where the value addition is much more than agriculture, the committee explained.   It has proposed that water from government sources as prescribed in the Orissa Irrigation Act, 1959, rate for commercial and industrial use has to be doubled in a year when rainfall is less than 30 per cent of annual average. The levy on water needs periodic revision in view of inflation, the committee said and added the rate should act as a deterrent against overuse of this scarce resource.