Medigadda sends down over 500 tmc within a week

The officials were more or less certain of the scope for lifting water from Medigadda barrage even with all its gates fully open with over eight to ten lakh cusecs being let off.

Hyderabad: Even as upstream projects depending solely on the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project are waiting for a mere trickle, downstream reservoirs are overflowing as a fallout of the problem of plenty. A strange situation is prevailing under the multiple reservoirs for which the multi-stage KLIP is the lifeline.

Over 500 TMC of water was sent down by the Medigadda (Lakshmi) barrage during the past one week without a drop being utilised so far. The officials were more or less certain of the scope for lifting water from Medigadda barrage even with all its gates fully open with over eight to ten lakh cusecs being let off.

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Reports on the feasibility issues to be addressed for resuming pumping operations from Medigadda have been furnished to the National Dam Safety Authority (NDSA).

The works that were considered be of emergency in nature were taken up on Medigadda besides the upstream barrages at Annaram and Sundilla, key components of the project as recommended by the NDSA and a major part of them were completed. All the 35 pumping units that were part of the Lift Irrigation scheme were overhauled and kept ready for resuming operations.

As top officials confirmed, the State government had already written to the NDSA seeking permission for resuming pumping operations from the KLIP. But there is no clearance yet from the NDSA for lifting water from the Medigadda which continued to discharge over 7.7 lakh cusecs of flood water received mainly from Pranahita even on Thursday.

The Medigadda barrage remained rock solid even after discharging close to ten lakh cusecs flood water at the height of the flood last week.

After two rounds of talks with the NDSA officials in Delhi on Saturday and Monday last, State Irrigation officials ruled out the scope for pumping water from Medigadda immediately even if it was a promising option. They were citing issues that were likely to crop up in Annaram and Sundilla barrages in the process of reverse pumping.