Hyderabad: During its 60 years of existence, the rulers of united Andhra Pradesh failed to take up projects that could link the Godavari with its massive surplus with the Krishna which always runs out of water.
Now, with Telangana and AP emerging as separate states, there is still no coordination to utiise the huge quantum of precious Godavari waters that go waste into the sea every year.
The Srisailam dam, with a capacity of 225 TMC ft, and Nagarjunasagar, 315 TMC ft, have gone dry this year owing to the failure of monsoon in the catchment areas of the Krishna river, and Karnataka retaining all the water in its dams. Farmers who depend on the Krishna in both TS and AP face the danger of losing their Kharif crop.
At the same time, 500 TMC ft of Godavari water has gone waste into sea. Governments then and now are thinking up new schemes. Officials regularly visit other countries to learn how to conserve water, and adopt latest technologies from Israel and elsewhere on drip and sprinkler irrigation methods.
But these same governments are not interested in diverting the Godavari which has hundreds of TMC ft of surplus water to Krishna-based projects and from there to other areas.
Projects in Rayalasema and north coastal districts of AP and in many districts in Telangana face a 600 TMC ft of water deficit.
If projects had been constructed to divert just one quarter of the surplus Godavari waters to other areas, both the states would not be staring at a crisis.
Much before the concept of interlinking of rivers came up, way back in 1852, Sir Arthur Cotton, the famed British engineer envisaged the linking of two canals, one from the Godavari and another from the Krishna, at Eluru.
He would have known what he was talking about: He is credited with constructing the massive anicut near Rajahmundry, the Dowaleswaram barrage, to irrigate 10 lakh acres in East and West Godavari districts and was responsible for constructing the anicut at Vijayawada (Prakasam barrage) to irrigate 13 lakh acres of Krishna Delta.
Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu who ignored the diversion of the Godavari for the full nine years of his tenure as Chief Minister of undivided AP, has now decided to divert a very little quantity of the Godavari to the Krishna Delta through the Pattiseema lift irrigation scheme as a stop gap arrangement till the Polavaram multipurpose dam is constructed: no one knows when it will be completed.
Polavaram, the only river interlinking project
There is only one river interlinking scheme in the AP the Polavaram project that diverts 80 TMC ft of Godavari water to the Krishna basin, or the Prakasam barrage, to augument supplies to 13 lakh acres.
Though the scheme was prepared in the pre-Independence period and the foundation stone laid in 1980, there was no headway in Polavaram till 2004 when the then Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy ordered construction of both the dam and the canals. But only the canals could be dug during his five-year tenure, and the dam could not be built during his five-year tenure.
There was an inordinate delay by successive governments in going ahead with the construction of the dam.
In the AP Reorganisation Act, the Centre declared Polavaram as a national project and took up construction of the dam. However it just alloted Rs 100 crore in the 2015-16 Budget, leaving a huge cap of over Rs 6,000 crore.
YSR plan for tail pond was spiked
Former chief minister of undivided Andhra Pradesh Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Red-dy had also envisaged the construction of another Godavari-Krishna link by taking up teh Dummugudem-Nagarjunasagar tail pond (Adavidevu-lapalli) project, but there has been no headway on that so far. Politics did play a major role in shelving the project even in undivided AP, and now the TRS government has decided not to take up the project.
Height of almatti may rise again
Almatti, the first major irrigation project on Krishna river in Karnataka presently has a storage capacity of 130 TMC ft at a dam height of 519 meters.
Justice Brijesh Kumar Tribunal, the second Tribunal constituted by the Central government after expiry of the Bachawat Tribunal in year 2000, had allowed Almatti dam height to go up to 524. 25 meters to impound another 130 TMC ft of Krishna water for use in Karnataka.
Since the Centre has so far not notified the Brijesh Kumar Tribunal Award due to a pending case in the SC, if not immediate, some time later Almatti Dam height is bound to increase so as its storage. It is everybody’s knowledge that both TS and AP are suffering due to no inflows into their dams due to present storage at Almatti and if it is allowed to store more quantum of Krishna waters, the situation in downstream AP and TS is anybody’s guess.
Telangana’s objection
Telangana irrigation adviser R. Vidyasagara Rao, a former Central Water Commission chief engineer, said the tail pond project was envisaged to benefit Pulichintala and Krishna delta areas. It also suffers from technical deficiencies. “As such we have decided not to go ahead with the project,” he said.
“We welcome any meaningful discussion on interlinking the Godavari with the Krishna with the Andhra Pradesh government. But TRS government after coming to power has decided to re-engineer its projects and priorities and we know how to go about it,” Mr Das said.
He said leaving aside Hyderabad, which requires only drinking water, the government would supply Godavari water through existing, ongoing and proposed schemes to five-and-a-half districts namely ‘Karimnagar, Medak, Warangal and half of Khammam’ and Krishna waters to Ranga Reddy, Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda and rest of Khammam district.
AP’s stand
Senior IAS official and principal secretary, Irrigation, B. Adityanath Das says it is the time for both the states to sit together and evolve schemes to utilise more and more Godavari waters for use in various basins and sub-basins.
He also said Andhra Pradesh government realised the importance of diversion schemes and it may come out with more such schemes for the use within Andhra Pradesh.
“We may even think of going for another diversion canal adjacent to Eluru canal to divert more waters to Bachingham canal and another major lift scheme to divert atleast hundred TMC ft to Prakasam and Nellore and 200 TMC ft to Rayalaseema region. Had there been Dummugudem-Sagar Tail pond link scheme there now, the entire Nagarjuna Sagar project ayacut of 22 lakhs in AP and Telangana would have got water this season,” he said.
