El Nino Prompts TG Government To Redesign Kupti Project For Additional Storage

ADILABAD: Telangana government has decided to redesign the proposed multi-purpose irrigation project at Kupti village in Neredigonda mandal in Adilabad district towards enhancing its storage capacity.

The move comes in the wake of El Nino effect, prolonged dry spells, and decreasing storage capacity of the existing irrigation projects like Kadam because of huge siltation.

For this purpose, the state government has decided to revise GOs 18 and 34 related to the Kupti irrigation project. As per the plan, the storage capacity of Kupti will be increased to 6.50 TMC from the earlier proposed 5.30 TMC.

Irrigation officials had earlier designed the Kupti multi-purpose irrigation project to store 5.30 TMC of water, with 3.30 TMC as live storage and 2 TMC dead storage. Once full, the project would release water to the Kadam Reservoir while generating hydroelectric power.

The redesigned project will store 6.50 TMC, with net available yield of 6.480 TMC.

The water stored will be made available to villages in Gudihathnoor, Ichoda, Neredigonda, Bazarhatnoor, and Sirikonda mandals of the Boath assembly constituency in Adilabad district.

Adilabad DCC president Naresh Jadhav said he had submitted a memorandum to the Irrigation department to revise the earlier design of the Kupti project and enhance its storage capacity to 6.480 TMC to safeguard the interests of the poor tribal people in the Boath constituency.

Naresh said the revised project will have an ayacut of 35,000 acres, including 6,000 acres each in Neredigonda, Boath, and Ichoda mandals, 5,000 acres each in Sonala and Bazarhathnoor mandals, apart from 7,000 acres in Gudihathnoor mandal.

He suggested that 0.411 TMC of water from the natural stream flowing near Tejapur village of Neredigonda mandal, with a catchment area of 51.28 square km, can be diverted to the Kupti project to enhance its capacity.