HYDERABAD: The Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP) will get water pumped from the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS) any day after August 10. This will end a long wait as SRSP, in spite of heavy rains in Maharashtra, never received any water for several years. This was largely due to the construction of barrages such as Babli on the Godavari river by Maharashtra government.
The woes of farmers in SRSP’s ayacut will finally end this year thanks to KLIS. An official in the Irrigation department said, “One of the major objectives of the government when it comes to KLIS has been to supplement SRSP through reversible pumping of Godavari water.
This will happen this year.” Sources said that pumping of Kaleshwaram water to SRSP would start sometime between August 10 and 15.“Even though the State did not receive good rains in June and July this year, we were able to tap into Pranahitha river.
Now, Godavari’s live storage is spread over 120 km from Mediagadda to Yellampally,” said an official. He added that people had already witnessed the first benefits of KLIS during dry spells in the past couple of months. Under Link-1 of KLIS, Pranahitha water was stored in Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla barrages, he said.
“Since no water had come in from Babli, SRSP has almost dried up. But now it will be filled in less than a week. This is the second benefit of KLIS,” the officials explained.
Sources said both Package-6 and Package-8 of KLIS need to work to divert Godavari waters to SRSP. The pumps are said to be ready. They will be operated at Nandi Medaram and Laxmipur.
Currently, SRSP has 5.72 tmcft water, against a gross storage capacity of 90.31 tmcft. Though, Babli gates were opened periodically by the Maharashtra government, as per the directions of the Supreme Court, inflows into SRSP were very less due to the diversion of water by Maharashtra through several small and medium barrages.
Meanwhile, copious inflows continued to flow into Srisailam reservoir in Andra Pradesh on Friday. They stood at 1,97,995 cusecs. The reservoir’s present storage level is recorded at 58.71 tmcft, against a full storage capacity of 215.81 tmcft. With heavy rains in Karnataka, Srisailam is expected to get good inflows over the next week.
Outflows from Almatti in were measured at 2,30,207 lakh cusecs at 5 pm on Friday. The discharge from Narayanpur was 2,10,128 cusecs. Inflows at Narayanapur were measured at 2,40,135 cusecs. Thanks to the water of both projects, inflows at Jurala in Telangana was 2,05,000 cusecs while outflows were 2,08,278 cusecs.
Tanks overflowing across State
As many as 1,278 minor irrigation tanks are overflowing due to heavy rains; 1,223 in the Godavari basin, 55 in the Krishna basin. According to data available with the Irrigation department, 10,005 tanks in the Godavari basin were filled between zero and 25 per cent; 3,108 between 25 per cent and 50 per cent; 3,184 between 50 per cent and 75 per cent and 2,636 between 75 per cent and 100 per cent. In the Krishna basin, 22,285 tanks were filled between 0 and 25 per cent; 1,020 between 25 per cent and 50 per cent; 173 between 50 per cent to 75 per cent and 96 till 100 per cent