Kerala asks SC to decommission Mullaperiyar dam

The Kerala government has told the Supreme Court that no amount of rejuvenation by any means can perpetuate the 126-year-old Mullaperiyar dam across the Periyar River and any failure could have a cascading effect on the Idukki Dam situated downstream along with lives and properties of 50 lakh people.

The government asked the top court to reduce the maximum permissible water level in the reservoir, currently fixed at 142 feet. It said as a long-term measure, a new dam should be built downstream and Mullaperiyar should be decommissioned.

In an affidavit, the Kerala government submitted that there is a limit to the number of years one can keep dams in service through maintenance and strengthening measures. All over the world, citizens, governments and organisations have begun to review the safety of their dams as per modern standards and design criteria, it added.

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“If water level at Mullaperiyar is kept at a higher level, releases from it will be affecting the already filled Idukki reservoir. In the worst case of a cascading failure of Mullaperiyar and Idukki, it will result in a catastrophe that is beyond imagination affecting the life and property of 50 lakhs of people residing below the Idukki dam,” the government claimed.

Citing "great concern" over erratic rainfall and climate change that occurred in the last four years (2018-2021), the state government said that it was in this context that the state of Kerala has urged to maintain the upper rule level at a lower level on September 20 to avoid flash floods downstream of the dam.

The Kerala government asked the court to ensure the water level in the dam's reservoir should not exceed 139 feet, three feet below the permissible limit of 142 feet, which was prescribed by the top court’s 2014 judgment. However, in 2018, the Supreme Court passed an order to maintain water level at 139 feet during the Kerala floods as a temporary arrangement.

On October 25, the top court had asked the Kerala government to refrain from debating the issue of suitable height of the water level in the Mullaperiyar dam before it, and rather engage with the Tamil Nadu government and the expert supervisory committee.

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