Farmers oppose plan to supply Hansua river water to Posco

The proposal of the Orissa government to supply surplus water from Hansua River to Posco India's proposed mega steel plant at Paradip has drawn flak from the farmers who have decided to protest this move of the government.

The activists of Nab Nirman Krushak Sangthan conducted a meeting at Redhua near Paradip while hundreds of farmers joined rallies to protest the move of the state government to supply water for the Posco project.

The farmer’s leaders like Akshaya Kumar, Soren Rout, Rashmiranjan Swain and others delivered speeches on the occasion.

They stated that Hansua is not a river but a drainage channel whose catchment’s area from Kandarpur to Erasama is 278 square miles.

Local farmers have alleged that majority of farmers of Birdi, Raghunathpur, Jagatsinghpur, Tirtol, Erasama and Balikuda have been cultivating their vegetable crops, sunflower, groundnuts, mustard, paddy and other crops by availing water from different bases of the Hansua channel.

Farmers also use the water from this channel for the transplantation of paddy crops during the Kharif season in the event of scanty rainfall and delay in supply of irrigated water through canal.

The farmers have been using lift irrigation points to pump out water from this channel to supply water for agricultural purposes. The farmers' leaders stated that nearly 35,000 ha of paddy crops of Jagatsinghpur district are getting waterlogged during the rainy season due to non release of rain water as river creeks and the Jatadhari river mouth have been choked.

Steps will be taken to renovate river creeks and to dredge Hansua channel and Jatadhari River mouth to release water so water logging would be averted properly, said Assistant engineer (drainage subdivision) of Erasama Kisoher Chandra Patra.

The supply of water to Posco through a barrage will result in water stagnation and will have serious consequences on livelihood patterns of people besides damaging the road communication infrastructure, they added.

Out of 17,806 hectares, 5003 hectares are irrigated land in Erasama area and the rest lands are non-irrigated. Hundreds of farmers use the water of this river during rabi and kharif seasons through lift irrigation points.

After supply of water to Posco, the base of this river will be dried and farmers will be deprived of pumping out water from Hansua to irrigate non –irrigated lands.

“For the sake of one company (Posco), thousands of people cannot suffer and their livelihood patterns must not be disturbed. We apprehend the people of the particular areas would not tolerate this and there might be agitations and mass movements in the district of Jagatsinghpur”, said zilla parishad member cum President of Ersama Ba Simiti, Sarada Jena.