Sambalpur District

Guest Post by: Ranjan Panda

Sambalpur 27.5.2009

What 'Water Initiatives Orissa (WIO)' had found out three years ago have been substantiated now by a World Bank report, titled 'Climate Change Impacts in Drought and Flood Affected Areas: Case Studies in India'. The World Bank report , which took Orissa as a case study of flooding in a climate change scenarios - has referred to projections that 'temperatures, precipitation, and flooding are likely to increase, with adverse impacts on crop yields and farm incomes. Among the more substantial effects is a spatial shift in the pattern of rainfall towards the already flood-prone coastal areas'. Three years ago the WIO had found out significant increase in average annual rainfall in coastal districts like Baleswar and Puri. Now the World Bank report has projected 23 per cent increase in annual mean rainfall in that region.

A story from NGO MASS on successfully reviving an open well in Padiabadmal village in Orissa, that had been neglected for two decades. In a tube-well dependent drinking water supply system, an initiative by people of Padiabadmal, a tribal inhabited village in Western Orissa, has come as a refreshing fresh water splash.

The Orissa River Conference is being held from April 18 - 20, 2009, Sambalpur, Odisha.

India River Network (IRN) and Water Initiatives Orissa (WIO) invite you to a three day long Orissa River Conference. Rivers are in stress and dying. Odisha is no exception. All of its rivers including major rivers Mahanadi, Brahmani are dying of quantitative and qualitative degradation and decrease. Water salinity in the lower Brahmani has gone up as river flow has almost stopped in crucial summer months. Water flow in the Mahanadi River too is decreasing at a rapid rate. A comparison between second half of the post Hirakud dam period with the first half shows about 15 percent of decrease in average annual flow. Other rivers like Baitarani, Subarnarekha, Vanshadhara, Rushikulya and Nagabali etc. are also suffering the same fate. The problems are manifold. Unsustainable growth of population; industrialization led pollution; climate change and many other problems have virtually wrecked havoc on the fate of the rivers. The rivers are dying and are surely spelling doom for the civilizations around them.