As drought tightens grip, Kaleshwaram comes to the rescue

Known for its highest pumping and motor capacity in the world and its support of the largest surge pool facilities, just one of the seven pumps was switched on, resuming its operation around 4 pm on Sunday.

Hyderabad: They ridiculed it in every way they could, from calling it a mammoth mistake, a waste of money, a scam to a flop show, flawed and useless.

But when every other source failed to quench the thirst of people in erstwhile Karimnagar, the very people who derided the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project are now depending on it.

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The water-starved people of Ramadugu, Malyala, Boinpalli and Gangadhara mandals, who were at their wits’ end asking local authorities and elected representatives for water for several weeks, will testify to the significance of the Kaleshwaram Project.

They are now offering prayers expressing their gratitude to the Bahubali motors of the Gayatri pump house in Package 8 of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP) for ending their travails overnight.

People in a cluster of villages in the vicinity of Lakshmipur are celebrating the arrival of water in their ponds and tanks ahead of the peak summer.

They are also hailing former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao for his farsightedness that went into the construction of the Gayatri pump house, which bailed them out from acute scarcity conditions today.

Earlier, on Sunday, with pressure mounting pressure following repeated protests by the public and farmers, the State government issued special instructions to initiate steps to augment the supply of drinking water in different gram panchayats where people were up in arms for water.

The Lakshmipur underground pumping station (Gayatri pump house) of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project came in handy for them. The Gayatri pump house, equipped with seven Bahubali motors of 139 MW capacity each, will lift three tmc of water a day.

Known for its highest pumping and motor capacity in the world and its support of the largest surge pool facilities, just one of the seven pumps was switched on, resuming its operation around 4 pm on Sunday.

Water was lifted to the Sriramsagar Flood Flow Canal, filling many of the drinking water supply sources up to the Mid Manair project with 0.1 tmc of water, and the operation was completed in just three hours, thereby complying with the special instructions issued by the government.

This emergency supply has been sourced from the Sripada Yellampalli project, which has been left with only 7.85 tmc of water as against its gross storage capacity of 20.17 tmc.

The water from Sripada Yellampalli was the only hope to cater to the drinking water needs of the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad and towns and habitations en route.

Welcoming the government decision to draw water from the KLIS sources to meet the drinking water needs in Karimnagar villages, V Prakash Rao, former chairman, Telangana Water Resources Development Corporation, said the real importance of Kaleshwaram was known in meeting such emergencies.

Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy must realize that the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme was the only dependable source for a major part of the State, he said.

Revanth Reddy must take steps to ensure that the lift operation from Medigadda barrage is resumed at least by the next Yasangi season by completing the project rehabilitation task at the earliest.

When the NDSA wanted the barrages of KLIP to be emptied to facilitate end-to-end investigation of the structures, the water should have been lifted to the reservoirs upstream instead of letting them flow down to the sea.

Such a measure would have given an additional advantage to the State, wherein many projects, including Mid Maniar, were on the verge of going empty, he said.