VIJAYAWADA: The state government has urged the Krishna River Water Management Board to supply 10 TMC of water from Nagarjuna Sagar to address the drinking water needs of the people of Guntur and Prakasam districts and in the tail end areas of the Left and Right NS Canals in the the Krishna Delta.
Stating this at a news conference here on Thursday, Irrigation Minister Devineni Umamaheswara Rao said that priority would be accorded to solving the drinking water problem. He said there was hardly 2.5 TMC of water in the canals and added that they expected the situation to improve in the coming days.
Explaining the present water levels in various projects on the Krishna River upstream, he said that Krishnamma (river Krishna) was flowing slowly and prayed that it would hasten to reach Srisailam and then Nagarjuna Sagar, so that the thirst of lakhs of people in the Krishna Delta would be quenched.
On the other hand, the Godavari river was emptying tens of TMCFT of water into the sea, he said and added that since June 1, a total 456.9 TMCFT of water from Godavari had gone waste into the sea. “Our effort is to divert such flood water to the Krishna river and for that purpose we have taken up the Pattiseema Lift Irrigtaion Scheme. Once the project is completed, there will be sufficient water not only in Krishna river but also for Rayalaseema”, he said.
The minister said that while the government was making sincere efforts to address the water problem, opposition leader YS Jagan Mohan Reddy was engaged in malicious propaganda against the government. “He says we are pocketing kickbacks from the projects. He is mistaken. It is not we, but it was his father late YS Rajasekhar Reddy and those in his government who had looted the State Exchequer in the name of ‘Jalayagnam”, he added.
The minister said that efforts were on to get the Polavaram Project completed in four years. He said that the construction of the new state capital city would commence once the foundation stone was laid in October. “We are also determined to complete the works pertaining to the GNSS, HNSS, Veligonda projects at the earliest,” he added.