Ministers review Budameru flood control measures

Vijayawada: In order to prepare a complete action plan on the permanent flood control measures to Budameru and submit the same to Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, irrigation minister Nimmala Rma Naidu and minister for municipal administration and urban development P Narayana conducted a review with the officials at the irrigation camp office here on Friday.

Special chief secretary Sai Prasad, principal secretary of municipal administration Kanna Ba-bu, CRDA commissioner Katamaneni Bhaskar, municipal commissioner Dhyanachandra, irri-gation engineer-in-chief Venkateswara Rao along with the other officials of Irrigation, Munici-pal Town Planning, the Revenue and Survey departments attended the meeting.

The irrigation, municipal administration and the revenue departments had already held four review meeting to avoid the recurrence of same mistakes committed by the previous govern-ment. An action plan is being prepared to increase the capacity of Budameru flow to 40,000 cusecs in case it is repeated in future.

Addressing the media after the review meeting, irrigation minister recalled that all of us wit-nessed the havoc Budameru played on people of the city. The Budameru breached at three places since it could not withstand 50,000 cusecs of flow in a single day.

Recollecting the service rendered by the Chief Minister with his vast experience to tide over the problem that saved people, the minister said that a comprehensive report would be sub-mitted to the Chief Minister on measures to be taken to prevent recurrence of such situations.

Presently, the capacity of the Budameru diversion canal was 17,500 cusecs and it would be increased to 37,500 cusecs. A report to that effect will be submitted to the Chief Minister.

Rama Naidu said that the officials were instructed to prepare proposals to increase the ca-pacity of the old channel from Velagaleru regulator to Kolleru. He recalled that the tenders were called for increasing the capacity of the Budameru diversion channel to 35,000 cusecs during the previous TDP government at a cost of Rs 464 crore and 80 per cent of the works were completed.

The previous YSRCP government did not complete the 20 per cent works which resulted in a massive damage due to flood to Budameru. As a result, the people of Vijayawada paid dearly for the mistake of the previous government.

Moreover, the previous government cancelled the channel extension work from Enikepadu under tunnel to Kolleru, he said.

Presently, plans are afoot to increase capacity of old channel up to 10,000 cusecs parallel to the Budameru channel.

Narayana addressing the media said that the people of 34 divisions in the city suffered due to the Budameru floods. Nearly five lakh people remained in water for four days. The government sprang into action and supplied 30 lakh drinking water bottles per day.

He said the review focused on prevention of flood to Budameru forever in future. The meeting discussed the possibility of simultaneous floods to Budameru and River Krishna and it would be discussed with the disaster management department. The Central government would be urged to provide help for the permanent prevention of flood to Budameru in future.