Gear Up For Phase-II Desilting of Reservoirs, Uttam Tells Officials

Hyderabad: Irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Friday directed department officials to immediately begin Phase-II of desilting of major irrigation projects, calling unaddressed sedimentation issues at reservoirs a major problem. Uttam Kumar Reddy said it needed tackling under the national framework for desiltation and sediment management.

"Sedimentation has severely impacted storage in projects like SRSP, where capacity has dropped from the original of around 120 tmc ft to approximately 80 tmc ft due to decades of silt build-up,” he said at a meeting of irrigation department officials, farmers and their representatives from the SRSP Stage II ayacut districts at the Secretariat here. He assured the farmers that he would discuss with Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy the tail-end irrigation issues.

“Proposals for taking up the desilting programme will be placed before the cabinet for approvals and funding,” he said.

Uttam Kumar Reddy said the desilting of the Kaddam project was successfully taken up in the first phase using modern dredging techniques on a pilot basis. “The executing agency is facing difficulties in marketing the extracted sand as it has limited local demand, and the long distance to markets like Hyderabad makes transportation unremunerative, affecting disposal and cost recovery,” he said.

“We must press ahead with scaled-up desiltation across major projects to restore gross storage capacities and ensure equitable water distribution,” he said, and told the officials to prepare detailed proposals and explore sustainable solutions for using the dredged silt and sand.