Srisailam water to be released into Nagarjuna Sagar canal

Khammam: Due to heavy inflow of rainwater during the past couple of days, officials have decided to release water from Srishailam reservoir into Nagarjuna Sagar Left canal on Saturday.

It needs to be mentioned here that due to heavy inflow of rainwater in the last few days many reservoirs like Palair and Wyra besides tanks and streams across the district are overflowing. Particularly, the water level in the Srisailam reservoir reached to 562 feet out of its full capacity of 590 by Thursday night with heavy inflow of nearly 3 lakh cusecs of rainwater.

The officials decided to release water from Srishailam reservoir keeping in view the heavy inflows of rainwater to three zones through Nagarjuna Sagar Left Canal.

The first zone covers the areas from Nalgonda to Palair reservoir, from Palair to Lankasagar reservoir in Khammam is second zone and up to Nuziveedu of Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh is considered as third zone.

According to the Agriculture department, about 3.2 lakh hectares of land is cultivated during this Kharif season out of which the paddy occupies about 67,000 hectares across the Khammam district.

The District Convenor of Farmers Coordination Committee, Nallamalla Venkateswar Rao said that the State government  dopted a scientific approach in extending irrigation facility to the farmers by tapping each drop of rain water and water available in the irrigation projects. It was readying farmers for cultivation by analyzing and forecasting the weather conditions and water levels in the irrigation projects.

In 7 mandals, nearly 2.5 lakh acres of land is cultivated under Palair ayacut limits along with 70,000 acres of land under Bhakta Ramadasu Project. The water from Nagarjuna Sagar Left Canal will be released on Saturday. So, the farmers can cultivate the crops and take necessary measures for protecting the standing crops by taking proper suggestions from the agricultural officials and scientists, he added.

District Collector D S Lokesh Kumar after conducting a review meeting with the officials of Agriculture and Horticulture departments and NSP officials submitted a report to the government on the requirement of water for irrigation purpose in the district. 

Analysing the report, the government decided to release about 45 tmc’s of water through Nagarjuna Sagar Left Canal for this Kharif season. He suggested the officials to be alert till water reaches the tale-end areas of the ayacut under NSP left canal and ordered them to release the water with on and off method for six wettings.