NIZAMABAD: For the first time, fish have died on a large scale at the Sriramsagar project, leaving thousands of fishermen families in anguish. Fish weighing around 10 kg also died over the past few days. It is believed that contaminated water might be the reason for the deaths. Quintals of fish were found dead on the banks of Godavari and Sriramsagar project in Nizamabad and Nirmal districts. Fisheries department officials also detected ‘red tail’ disease among the fishes. Sriramsagar project has 1,059.7-ft water level with 13.28 tmc ft of water storage, against its full reservoir capacity of 1,091 ft and 90.313 tmc storage.
Project officials are releasing 5,074 cusecs into the Kakatiya canal. In addition, evaporation losses are also high. It is believed that polluted water from the Phulong stream of Nizamabad and industrial pollution from Maharashtra affected water quality in the Godavari. Speaking to this correspondent, S. Ramulu, a fisherman, said Bocha variety fish had died in large scale due to polluted water. There are natural fish and seedlings in SRSP, but the death rate is alarming, he said. “We had urged project officials to stop the outflow of water from SRSP to save the fish, but in vain,” he said.
