Dawnfire:

Water and land situation in Auroville and the bioregion

"I have seen the two presentations, one of a study made by French Pr. Sophie Violette and Dr.Aude Vincent, and by Mr. Jeen Kootstra, the conclusions of which are extremely alarming for Auroville and the bio region. I know almost since I have been here that the situation is not good, but it has greatly deteriorated since the beginning of the nineties. The groundwater resources in Auroville’s Bioregion are greatly depleted by the excessive extraction: the part of the rain which percolates through to the aquifers over 1000km2 are a mean 200 Mm3 (two hundred million cubic meters) when the extraction is above 750 Mm3 – so we consume 3 to 4 times more than what the water recharges…

Only 15% of the rains percolates while another 20% run off to the sea (a limited part is intercepted by the tanks). All the rest of the rain is simply evaporated by the water bodies, the soil and the vegetation. Even by creating large infrastructures to increase the recharge to the aquifers, the balance is still largely negative. Our main aquifer (Vanur) has so much gone down that we should have had already saline water since 1990! The only wellfounded hypothesis why it is not yet so as per our scientists’ findings is that a large volume of fresh water lies under the seabed, protecting temporarily from seawater intrusion. But to investigate offshore would be too costly.

But what they say is that it could happen ANYTIME : next day, next months, but not more than a few years, given the present consumption rate, and given that it increases considerably by the day… And when this is started, within 6 months half of the aquifer will turn saline! And then? It is usually estimated that it takes 15000 years to restore an aquifer by nature ways… Worth mentioning: the 2 main other aquifers of the area (Alluvium and Cuddalore) are already under seawater intrusion in the south! Definitively no, our groundwater resources are not sustainable in the present scenario. Are we willing to act or to let the devastation strike our area?

The picture was very clear: if Auroville does not do immediately its utmost, and on a very large scale to inform the peasants in the bioregion and try and help them for example to switch to other crops which are less water consuming and replace by the drop-by-drop or/and sprinkling irrigation types their present type of irrigation: 21/5 (3 inches pipes gushing water out at full power draw 50.000 litres/hour, in 4 hours 200.000 litres, so if there are 10 peasants in each village who use these pipes 4 hours, that makes 800.000 litres every half day…), the area will have the same fate as Tirunelvelli 16 years ago: it was a rich and fertile region covered by magnificent plantations of coconuts, etc. Their land was highly priced. In a very short time, their plantations died because the water had become saline, and their fields were worth not one paisa: they lost everything: land, home, and had to leave to find work elsewhere, filling the slums in Cuddalore, Puducherri, Mumbay, Chennai..

And, according to the Electricity Minister Arcot N. Veenasamy, 40.000 free electric water pumping are delivered each year, and more than 5 lakhs requests for the same are on the waiting list….40.000 more each year to follow the same patterns of irrigation…

The politicians at all levels should be all contacted by Auroville and informed that the situation is really alarming, a whole agricultural region might die, especially taking into account that all along the east cost Road, around Puducherri and Cuddalore there are a great number of private or industrial settlements which also draw a lot of water…They should completely stop this suicidal policy of giving free access to electricity for agriculture and subsidise instead the less consuming modes of irrigation and encourage the peasants by incentives to switch to less water consuming crops. Actually, they should also subsidise the buying of pure Limonool rather than the purchase of chemical pesticides, which slowly damage and kill the population and their children – but this is another topic…

Many people in Auroville and in the area do not want to believe these warnings that the Water Service, and now Harvest have given repeatedly. People don’t want do believe it. They see that they still have water, and do not want to change their habits in any way.

They act like all the people around the world who live near active volcanoes or in highly seismic regions: like any human being they hope that nothing terrible will happen, cling stubbornly to the land and house where they and their ancestors have grown up and lived for centuries, and want to hold on to them and to their habits until the last moment. The problem is that the last moment is really one moment too late: it is the moment when they have already lost everything including in many cases not only their possessions, but also their lives and that of their families and relatives...

And all those who have bought private lands in or around Auroville or further in the bioregion, thinking that they have made a very good investment, but also the speculators who buy and build all around, might lose all their money. For the big speculators, the loss is less important, because they have an important back up, but for all those local landowners whose only wealth is their fields and their crops and their houses here or there, it might prove tragically catastrophic.

Auroville would soon become again what it was 40 years ago: a barren desert whose land was worth nothing – especially if one takes also into account the wood cutting habits of the inhabitants. And the inhabitants of the area would have the same choice as those of Tirunelvelli…It would be a catastrophe for all…"

By Turiya