Telangana govt constitutes expert panel to recommend flood protection measures

The committee, comprising of senior engineers from the Irrigation department and experts from other agencies, will study flood control approaches adopted in the two major river basins of India - Ganga and Brahmaputra and submit its report within a month.

Hyderabad: The State government on Tuesday constituted an expert committee to study and recommend measures for protection of flood-prone areas and key installations.

The committee, comprising of senior engineers from the Irrigation department and experts from other agencies, will study flood control approaches adopted in the two major river basins of India – Ganga and Brahmaputra and submit its report within a month.

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This was announced by Special Chief Secretary (Irrigation and Command Area Development) Rajat Kumar after a high level review on the flood situation in the State and permanent mitigation measures to be taken. He wanted flood control methods developed for Ganga and Brahmaputra to be studied and suitable measures adopted for Godavari river.

Rajat Kumar emphasised the need for developing infrastructure needed to ensure the safety of key installations such as the Heavy Water Plant at Manuguru close to the river bank of Godavari along with important shrines like Sri Sitaramachandra Swamy Devasthanam at Bhadrachalam and Parnasala, another pilgrim centre on the banks of the river.

The expert panel will study the need for relocation of villages often affected. They are located in the high flood zone of the river. Out of 37 streams joining the Godavari River, protection measures were needed for seven major streams having a discharge of more than 10,000 cusecs.

The Special Chief Secretary explained that the impact of the Polavaram backwaters was minimized this year, as the State had taken up the matter with Polavaram Project Authority (PPA) well in advance and ensured that all the gates of Polavaram project were kept open during the floods.

Detailed discussions took place on the flood situation at Kaddam project and condition of the Kaddam dam following a presentation made by consultants Vassar Labs.

It was explained that 70 percent of the rainfall occurs in the catchment of Kaddam Dam very near to the reservoir and flash floods were occurring without allowing much time to operate the gates to create a flood cushion. The Special Chief Secretary instructed officials to install river gauges at key locations in the catchment area to assess the exact inflows into the reservoir.

ENC (General)- Muralidhar , ENC (O&M)- B. Nagendra Rao, ENC (Admn)- Anil Kumar, ENC(Gajwel)- B.Hariram , Advisor- J.Vijay Prakash, OSD (Irrigation) to Chief Minister Sridhar Rao Deshpande were among those who took part in the review.