Work apace to plug cistern leak

By M. Malleswara Rao

HYDERABAD, SEPT.8. The cistern or artificial lake developed on the top of the Puttamgandi hills in Nalgonda district to receive Krishna waters lifted from Nagarjunasagar under the Srisailam Left Bank Canal project, has developed leakage at a point on the masonry wall, apart from suffering from seepages underneath.

But, it should not cause any worry, for, such outgo is normal under any new project as happened in the case of Telugu Ganga when it was commissioned in 1996.

A team of irrigation engineers, led by Mr B. V. S. Prakasa Rao, SLBC Project Administrator, inspected the leakage point yesterday and soon after, an action programme was grounded to plug it. Mr Rao who returned to the city today, told The Hindu that work was in full swing to plug the leakage and arrest the seepage.

The first of the four pumpsets of the India's biggest lift project which was commissioned a week ago, has been in continuous operation since then and able to successfully lift the Nagarjunasagar waters to a height of 100 ft and dump into the cistern thus proving the prowess of the BHEL, its maker. Inquisitive crowds from nearby villages continue to throng the hill-top where the Krishna waters, lifted by the pump, cascade into the man-made reservoir. A decades-long dream realised. For the time being, the pumping is done at 400-cusec capacity as the storage in Nagarjunasagar is available only up to 517 ft MSL, against the set's designed capacity of 600 cusecs.

By Saturday, the storage in the cistern was built up to 0.2 tmcft against while its designed capacity is 0.4 tmcft. Mr Rao says that the pump will be run up to September 15 to attain full storage.

The 134-km-long main canal of the project is complete except for one km and digging has been launched for this stretch. When full, the cistern will push waters into the Akkampalli Balancing Reservoir, about 10 km afar, which has been readied up to certain level for the purpose.

For the present, an ayacut of 17,500 acres has been targeted with 2,800 acres out of that for immediate wetting. Mr. Rao says this can be done by way of tank-filling. Out of the 93 tanks marked for being filled under the project, a few of them which require a few meters of channels to receive SLBC waters will be taken up immediately. Once these tanks are full, flow to fields is easy because they have their own outlets. Digging work on the branches and distributaries which will enable the project realise its final target of 3 lakh acres has been taken up simultaneously.

To start with, 45 villages en route which lie within one km of the main canal have been marked for receiving drinking water out of the 200-odd places identified for the benefit originally. The Irrigation department is convening a meeting of officials involved in Rural Water Supply schemes and farmers of the Water Users' Associations at Nalgonda on September 12 chaired by the District Collector, Mr. V. M. Manohar Prasad, to decide the action programme for drinking water supply and the cropping pattern for the limited acreage targeted now.

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