NIZAMABAD: Fourteen gates at the Babli project on the Godavari river were opened on Sunday following orders from the Supreme Court in the presence of Central Water Commission. The gates were opened in the presence of officials from the irrigation departments of Maharashtra and Telangana States, with the process being completed by the afternoon. The project is situated in Nanded district in Maharashtra and it is important to note that it is located upstream to the Sri Ram Sagar Project(SRSP) situated in Balkonda assembly constituency in Nizamabad district.
The gates were opened according to Supreme Court directions which mandate them to be open from July 1 to October 28(120 days) every year. As of now, 0.56 tmcft of water has been released from Babli and officials say that SRSP may receive only a small quantity of it. However, locals situated on both the banks of the river have been notified by officials as a precaution. SRSP Superintending Engineer(SE) G Srinivas Reddy told Express that the project will receive only 0.2 tmcft water due to lifting of gates at Babli project till Monday morning. He said that water flow could be observed at place where it meets the Godavari river at Kandakurthi and Basara in Adilabad district.
While upstream areas have not received expected amounts of rain in the last 25 days, it is reported that officials at the SRSP are worried about flooding in the coming days. The project has seen floods between July and October every year and with the opening of Babli gates , and rain in SRSP catchment areas, officials are on the lookout for warning signs of floods. However, no official forecasts or warnings have been announced till now.
The state’s irrigation department had recently taken a historic decision to release 10 tmcft water from Singoor and Nizam Sagar projects, on Manjeera river, to SRSP and it is reported that officials are worried about water management due to this. During this period the project received around 98,000 cusecs of fresh water, much to relief and surprise of officials who were worried that the reservoir would be at a dead-level storage otherwise. Also in 2017, SRSP received only 65 tmcft of water resulting in its inability to supply the required irrigation water to the five surrounding districts.
Fast facts
SRSP FRL 1091 feet
Present 1056.2 feet
Total capacity 90 TMC
Presently 10.17 TMC
SRSP would only get about 0.2 TMC water from Babli