The plan to fill the tanks in Vijayapura district to help augment drinking water supply to cities and villages has had the incidental benefit of increasing green cover as well. The Karnataka Government is now developing high-density forests near the Mamadapur and Bhutnal tanks. Going ahead, afforestation will be taken up around all tanks that are being filled up.
Water supply to Vijayapura city and surrounding villages was disrupted this year due to delayed rainfall. The city was getting drinking water just once or twice a fortnight. This led to the State Government deciding to fill tanks around Vijayapura city to ensure regular supply of water.
Water from the Krishna river was being pumped through a jack well near Lingadahalli. The water was pumped into tanks in Mamadapur, Bhutnal and Begum Talab. This helped augment the water storage of Vijayapura that has around 4 lakh residents.
Afforestation around tanks
However, near normal rainfall in July led to emergence of different ideas. Officials began afforestation around the tanks, in the hope that it would work as a watershed, harvesting rain water and holding back moisture, long after efforts of filling the tanks ended.
“High density planting is being taken up at the Mamadapur site. Once completed, it will be six times bigger than Lalbagh (in Bengaluru) in terms of area,’‘ a senior officer said.
This is not the first attempt at afforestation at Mamadapur and Bhutnal.
“We began with Mamadapur and Bhutnal. We will slowly include areas around other tanks,’‘ said M.B. Patil, Industries Minister who is in charge of the district. “Mamadapur tank is said to be the third biggest man-made tanks in Karnataka. We are taking up plantation on the 1,560 acres of surrounding land, with the aim to turn it into a model man-made forest. We have begun a drive to plant over 65,000 saplings in the fallow land around Mamadapur tank. A total of over two lakh saplings will come up in phases,” he said.
In another initiative, around 50,000 saplings have been planted all around Bhutnal. Since Bhutnal is closer to Vijayapura city, authorities plan to turn the area into a tourist attraction, with recreation and eating zones.
Mamadapur is home to a historic tank
Adilshahi kings built the Mamadapur tank in the 16th century. It is spread over 400 acres and can hold nearly 1 tmcft of water. It is part of an intricate network of irrigation canals built by engineers of the Adilshahi regime who used underground terracota pipes to transport water. The tank served as the reservoir for some villages where water-intensive crops, like paddy, were cultivated.
The Bhutnal tank was built in 1910, based on designs created by a committee headed by Sir M. Visvesvaraya. It was meant to collect rainwater and run-off from streams to supply drinking water to the city of Vijayapura. The city, as per a survey of that time, was expected to have a population of around of 1.5 lakh by the year 1940.
It can hold around 280 million cubic feet, or around 0.25 tmcft. However, over the period of a century, it began drying up, a process that was hastened by repeated droughts and destruction of feeding water bodies and inlet streams due to indiscriminate real estate development and other factors.
