Taladanda canal. Picture by Badrika Nath Das

Cuttack, Feb. 15: Work has started on a Rs 98-crore project to “revitalise” Taladanda, the state’s longest canal that starts at Jobra (Cuttack) and links Mahanadi river with the Bay of Bengal in Paradip.

The Naveen Patnaik government has promised “restoration” of the 83km long Taladanda to something closer to the irrigation canal that it used to be a century ago.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded two-year project has begun in Biribati downstream. Water resources department officials admit the silted canal had been damaged with eroded banks at several stretches due to decades of neglect. Parts of the canal were dug up in 1862 by the East India Company for irrigation purposes as well as for using as a waterway. It was later taken over by the British government, which completed it in 1869.

Basudev Mohapatra, the superintendent engineer of eastern circle (Cuttack), told The Telegraph today that the work of the project is progressing at a very fast pace.

“The project has been started on the 11.79km stretch from Biribati to Bhutmundai in the first phase. It is expected to be completed before the onset of monsoon,” he said, adding: “Work on the 11.79 km stretch from Bhutmundai towards Paradip would follow in the second phase.”

Mohapatra added that the restoration work was not started from Jobra in Cuttack to Biribati due to the presence of structures along the banks at some places and pending cases related to the structures in the court.

“The idea of the project is to protect the canal and restore it to its original look and function as an irrigation canal by fortification of the eroded banks and side walls,” he said. The restoration work is being undertaken with a long-term loan availed from ADB for the Orissa Integrated Irrigated Agriculture and Water Management Project (OIIAWMP).

The project assumes significance as Taladanda canal was designed to be a source of water for irrigation to six blocks of Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur districts – Sadar Cuttack, Jagatsinghpur, Raghunathpur, Balikuda, Tirtol and Ersama.

The project, irrigation department officials said, has a livelihood component under which the Pani Panchayats (water users’ associations) will be strengthened. The OIIAWMP aims to involve the maximum number of self-help groups to partner water management for increasing agricultural production in the state. The farmers will be imparted training on water management for effective use of irrigated water, the officials said.

Incidentally, Taladanda has been the centre of an agitation following the state government’s decision to allow Posco to use Mahanadi’s water through the canal for its proposed steel plant near Paradip. The decision received approval of the central government recently.

The decision has received stiff opposition from the Mahanadi Banchao Committee members. The committee members have threatened to launch a farmers’ agitation in coastal Orissa if the river water is diverted from the Jobra barrage through the irrigation canal.