Speakers at a State-level seminar here today vehemently opposed the proposal of the Orissa government to supply water from Hansua River in Jagatsinghpur district to proposed Posco steel plant at Paradip. Organized by Odisha Jala Surakhya Janamanch, the seminar was attended among others by hundreds of farmers from areas like Biridi, Raghunathpu, Tirtol, Erasama and Balikuda of the district. The Janamanch convener Chittaranjan Mohanty told the gathering that Hansua is not a natural river. Its not even a tributary of Mahanadi system and not even a rivulet having independent source of water. Rather Hansua is a drainage channel of Taladanda canal through which seepage water from the canal and rain waters flow during the time of flood to avert water logging in vast stretches of agricultural land in the locality, Mohanty said adding that the governments proposal to draw water from this channel for the South Korean steel major is nothing but indirectly drawing water from the Taladanda canal. The 90 km Taladanda canal from Cuttack to Paradip is exclusively meant for irrigation purpose. Even when the tail end areas of the canal face acute shortage of water for irrigation, how can the government think of drawing water from the middle of the canal for industrial purposes, the speakers asked in unison.Any proposal to draw water from the Hansua channel would also result in water stagnation and will have serious consequences on agricultural patterns of local people stretching from Kandarpur to Nalibar areas where besides paddy and vegetables, other cash crops like groundnut and mustard are grown in large tracts, the farmers said.