Yellampalli to meet irrigation needs of North Telangana

Despite continuous rainfall during the last few days, the water bodies have not received adequate inflows. Besides rivulets in their catchment areas, SRSP is the major water source for LMD and MMD.

Peddapalli: The Sripada Yellampalli project is all set to fulfill the irrigation needs of standing crops in the present Vanakalam season in north Telangana. Except the Yellampalli project, all the major irrigation projects including Sri Ram Sagar Project, Mid Manair and Lower Manair Dam in the erstwhile Karimnagar and Nizamabad districts are facing a water scarcity problem.

Despite continuous rainfall during the last few days, the water bodies have not received adequate inflows. Besides rivulets in their catchment areas, SRSP is the major water source for LMD and MMD. However, SRSP is also facing water scarcity due to lack of rains in the adjacent State of Maharashtra. Only 27.60 TMC of water is available as against its storage capacity of 90 TMC and the water body is getting an inflow of 25,000 cusecs. Last year around this time, 55 TMC of water was available in the project.

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Five lakh acres are under cultivation in Nizamabad, Nirmal, Jagtial, Peddapalli and Karimnagar districts under the Lakshmi and Kakatiya canals. Under the downstream of LMD, another 4.5 lakh acres are being cultivated in Karimnagar, Warganal, Khammam and Nalgonda districts by depending on the Kakatiya canal. According to officials here, it was not possible to release water from SRSP to its ayacut if the water levels in the project did not reach 55 TMC. Meanwhile, LMD and MMD were facing an acute water shortage. While 5.31 TMC is available in LMD as against its storage capacity of 24.07 TMC, 5.84 TMC of water is available in MMD as against its storage capacity of 27.50 TMC. It was not possible to release water to the ayacut from LMD unless 15 TMC was available, officials said.

Under these circumstances, the Yellampalli project, which is getting adequate inflows, is the only alternative to protect standing crops. Water levels in the project crossed 16 TMC against its storage capacity of 20.18 TMC. The project is getting 23,701 cusecs of inflows, which is why the government decided to lift water from Yellampalli and dump it in MMD from where the water would be taken to LMD to protect standing crops, officials said.