Pulichintala project getting ready for inauguration by CM Kiran Kumar Reddy after 102 years.
Hyderabad: The Pulichintala project, the terminal reservoir on River Krishna that was conceived in 1911 by British engineer Col. Ellis, is now being readied for inauguration by Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy on December 7, almost exactly after 102 years.
Named after eminent engineer and former Union Minister, Late Dr K.L. Rao, the Pulichintala dam built across the Krishna River between areas in Nalgonda on one side and Guntur on the other side, is the third major irrigation project, after Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar, that was built connecting Telangana and Seemandhra regions.
Pulichintala was the only site where a dam with significant storage capacity could be built before the Krishna joins the Bay of Bengal.
The dam will be multipurpose in nature, supplying irrigation water to the Krishna delta through powerhouses generating 120 MW of hydel power. It can have a total pondage of 45.77 TMC ft out of which 30 TMC ft will be live storage while the rest will be dead storage.
Though the dam will not provide new irrigation to even a single acre, it will stabilise the irrigation needs of over 13 lakh acres of the Krishna delta spread over five districts.
Pulichintala was conceived to stabilise the Krishna delta ayacut for raising paddy seedbeds and transplantation in the first week of June so that the crop could be harvested by early October and prevent losses in possible cyclones around that season.
At present, whenever the Nagarjunasagar dam’s crest gates are opened and the floodwater is released, a major portion of the water goes to waste into the sea as there is no storage capacity at the Prakasam barrage at Vijayawada.
Pulichintala, situated 115 km downstream of Nagarjunasagar and 85 km upstream of Prakasam barrage, can provide storage of 45 TMC ft besides regulating the water supplies to Krishna delta.
However, with only Halia and Musi rivulets joining the Krishna River between Nagarjuna Sagar and Pulichintala dams, there will not be much impact of these small rivulets and Pulichintala will need to be dependent only on releases from Nagarjuna Sagar dam.
Unfortunately, the Munneru and Paleru rivulets that join Krishna between Pulichintala and Prakasam barrage continues to be untapped. In fact the flows from these two rivulets are perennial in nature.
The proposal of former engineering-in-chief T. Hanumantha Rao on building four barrages in lieu of Pulichintala dam between Nagarjuna Sagar dam and Prakasam barrage to tap all the rivulets has not been positively considered by the government.
( Source : dc )
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