AP agrees for joint study of anomalies in impact of Polavaram backwaters flooding

Central Water Commission (CWC) has agreed to conduct a fresh joint study on the anomaly between the CWC-projected effect and the actual flood observed.

Hyderabad: Taking into consideration of Telangana’s objections over the adverse impact of the Polavaram project backwaters, the Central Water Commission (CWC) has agreed to conduct a fresh joint study on the anomaly between the CWC-projected effect and the actual flood observed.

However, the Commission rejected the demand for considering the backwater effect due to probable maximum flood (PMF) discharge at Polavaram project on river Godavari in Andhra Pradesh.

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The Andhra Pradesh government has also agreed to cooperate for the joint study in undertaking study of submergence effect in Telangana. The CWC has asked the Telangana government to submit the technical details pertaining to the submergence effect in Telangana due to Polavaram backwaters by October 9.

As a follow-up to the recent Supreme Court order on the Polavaram backwaters issue, a technical committee meeting chaired by CWC chairman RK Gupta was held to discuss the issue at New Delhi on Friday. Polavaram Project Authority chairman Chandrasekhar Iyer also attended.

The meeting was attended by engineers from all riparian States – Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. Apart from the spillway design, the impact of backwaters of the three riparian states and Godavari water tribunal award aspects were discussed in the meeting.

Explaining the need to conduct fresh study on the submergence effect in Telangana, the State engineers pointed out that there was a huge anomaly in the reports of the CWC and the ground reality. Hence, there was an urgent need to conduct fresh study.

The Telangana government has appealed to the Centre to conduct an independent study to observe the effects on the backwaters of Godavari river due to the construction of Polavaram major irrigation project in Andhra Pradesh. The Telangana officials informed that the CWC had designed the Polavaram project spillway for discharging 50 lakh cusecs against 36 lakh cusecs as envisaged in Godavari Water Disputes Tribunal award. They stated that this would cause much more submergence effect in Telangana, inducing more attenuation of flood peaks.

The CWC reportedly rejected the contentions of engineers of Chhattisgarh and Odisha that the backwaters at the highest flood level would result in flooding. The engineers from Odisha and Chhattisgarh raised apprehension over the spillway design of the Polavaram project, stating that there is a possibility of flood occurrence at 58 lakh cusecs.

Further, Odisha alleged that the combined backwaters survey conducted by CWC and AP was more beneficial for AP rather than them. The engineers from Odisha stated that they were not convinced with the combined survey and demanded separate survey for each State. However, the CWC turned down their demand.