ONGOLE: Taking proactive measures in the summer season, the Ongole district authorities are busy in filling up all major and minor summer storage (SS) tanks under the Nagarjuna Sagar Project Right Canal (NSPRC) to cater the drinking water needs of the district.
On the requests of the district and State RWS wing authorities, the NSP authorities released 5 TMC of water from the Nagarjuna Sagar reservoir through its right canal on April 8 to cater the drinking water needs of Guntur, Palnadu, Prakasam and Bapatla districts. The NSP waters reached the district border point at 85/3 mile stone which is a 137.44-km stretch on April 12 and now water flows into the Darsi Branch Canal through the Nagarjuna Sagar Jawahar Right Main Canal to reach the Darsi balancing point.
Meanwhile, the district RWS officials received information from the NSP authorities that an additional share of 3 TMC will be released through the NSP Right Canal.
“Out of nine major and minor summer storage tanks, in three tanks, including Mutukula DW Scheme, Gollapalli DW Scheme and Kurichedu tanks, the filling process was stopped and in the remaining six tanks the filling process is underway. At present the water flow in the canal is at around 1,100 cusecs and the same flow is expected to continue for another three-four days,” Ongole RWS wing EE A Ramaswamy told TNIE on Thursday. He further informed that there are around 98 SS tanks under the Nagarjuna Sagar Right main canal and the authorities are going to fill them as per the availability of the water in the coming days.
With the support of the local revenue, panchayat raj, police and other government department officials and staff, established canal monitoring committees on the NSP right main canal to curtail the unauthorised water usage and water thefts.
He further informed that non-notified tanks are also being filled in Tripurantakam, Kurichedu, Darsi and Mundlamuru mandals as per the representations received. The authorities are expecting that all the representation based filling of non-notified tanks will be completed by April 27, Ongole RWS SE SK Mardhan Ali said.
In this connection, the Ongole Municipal authorities are also making efforts to fill the two summer storage tanks (SS-1 and SS-2) with the NSP waters. For this, now the RWS authorities are filling all the above notified and non-notified drinking water schemes as well as the tanks of the Ramatheertham Balancing Reservoir (RBR).
“From April 27 they will fill the RBR and then the waters will be drawn from the RBR through the Ongole Branch Canal to fill the SS-1 and SS-2 tanks in view of the summer water needs of the residents of Ongole Municipal Corporation (OMC) limits,” the authorities informed.