ANANTAPUR: Even after the heavy floods hit Rayalaseema region due to incessant rain from upstream Karnataka areas of Krishna and Pennar basins, the region is unable to make use of this water due to poor storage facility.
Lack of expansion and maintenance of the canals and reservoirs is another problem. These are resulting in the discharge of water into the sea from Nellore district.
Constant heavy flows towards Srisailam in the past 15 days and the surplus sources could not be diverted to the existing reservoirs on a large scale. Srisailam reservoir was with full gross storage capacity, but the foreshore water could not be drawn fully to Rayalaseema.
The work on the Handri Neeva Sujala Shravanthi project designed to irrigate Rayalaseema region till the tail end parts, including Kuppam Branch Canal in Chittoor district is progressing at snail’s pace for the phase-II works.
Many structures were still to be erected for both phase-I and phase-II of the project from the Jeedipalli reservoir with additional branch canals.
Further, the long-pending proposal to widen the HNSS main canal from Malayala in Nandyal district towards Jeedipalli remains unattended. “As the Rayalaseema region has different types of soil and is famous for production of a variety of fruits, the insufficient water sources hit the horticulture production. The completion of the pending projects could take the region to a top level in the production,” CPI state secretary Ramakrishna observed.
He stressed the need to speed up the completion of the pending projects and added that the Tungabhadra reservoir has surplus water but the AP irrigation authorities were unable to draw maximum water because of the poor condition of the HLM Canal from the project base till the state borders.
The Pennar basin in Rayalaseema was also in a worse condition as the Gandikota reservoir was maintained with 25.37tmc-ft or 94.49 per cent capacity. But the downstream reservoir Annamayya remains with zero storage after it breached a year ago. Annamayya was almost empty and proposals are pending with the government for sanction of the restoration works.
Mylavaram’s full storage capacity was 9.98tmc-ft but the dam has only 1.44tmc-ft while 3,652 cusecs of water was being discharged to Pennar basin in YSR district.
Tungabhadra was overflowing in Kurnool district and the surplus water was merging with Srisailam in the absence of any attempt to make use of the surplus sources.
