Annamayya project redesign to boost storage

ANANTAPUR: Two-decades-old Annamayya Medium Irrigation Project across Cheyyeru, a tributary of Pennar River in Kadapa district, which got badly damaged during recent flash floods, is being redesigned to give it additional storage capacity.

In the wake of massive damage to the project and surrounding 12 villages of Rajampet following floods in Pennar, Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Wednesday directed irrigation authorities to redesign the existing project and also increase storage capacity of the dam to avoid complications in future.

Annamayya is located near Badanagadda in Rajampet mandal. It was taken up in 1981 and completed in 2001 with total ayacut of 22,500 acres.

The project has only a right canal of 23.63 km, though there had been proposals for a left canal too.

It has five spillways and one of them got reportedly jammed. When more than 3.5 lakh cusecs of water was received from upstream Pincha project, it resulted in massive damage to Annamayya project and floods inundated villages downstream.

Authorities maintain that the damage was purely because of overnight 3 lakh cusecs inflow, which hit the bund. Special officer Shashi Bhushan, who inspected Annamayya, observed that the incident is a natural disaster and unfortunate. What was once a bund appears like a plain land now.

“The district administration had cautioned and succeeded in convincing more than 50 percent of people from surrounding villages to evacuate a day before the damage. But the remaining people stayed put in the 12 villages and suffered damage,” he recalled.

As the project will have to be rebuilt, they are now planning to increase the storage capacity of the reservoir as per wishes of the Chief Minister.