With only 40% of the cultivable area under assured irrigation and potential ayacut requiring water for agriculture, a workshop to prepare an irrigation vision document for the district was conducted on Monday.
The day-long workshop was organised by the Water Resources Department involving students and faculty from 17 engineering colleges and other stake-holders like members of Janmabhoomi committees and water users’ associations and other departments like Rural Water Supply and Groundwater.
The workshop was conducted involving students with the Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu envisioning their role at the ground-level.
A number of officials and retried engineers spoke on aspects of irrigation.
Those interested would be sent to villages to study conditions based on data provided to them by the government and suggest solutions to improve irrigation facilities as well as water conservation. “The vision document should be ready in time for next kharif so as to implement some of the ideas,” said an official.
At the inaugural of the workshop, Collector Pravin Kumar said as 40 to 50 per cent of population in the district still depend on agricultural activity capacity for irrigation and productivity should be improved. Proposals had been made for four projects with ₹19 crore to bring an additional 3000 acres under cultivation. Of the 73 cascades (chain tanks) proposed in the district under “Neeru-Chettu” programme, 30 were completed. For water conservation, check-dams are being taken up under employment guarantee scheme MGNREGA in the tribal areas.
Polavaram
The district would get major benefit from Polavaram left main canal once it was completed and the government would take a decision on Uttrandhra Sujala Sravanthi to bring more area under cultivation.
Any fresh and innovative ideas from them would be implemented on a pilot basis, he told the students.
Chief Engineer, Minor Irrigation, Shabjaan said of the 3.96 crore acres in the State for 1.96 acres irrigation facility still needed to be created. Even where projects were being implemented gap ayacut accounts for 32 lakh acres.
Under 41,817 tanks, existing ayact accounted for 25.6 lakh acres and gap ayacut was a significant 55 per cent.
Of the 3896 cascades comprising 14978 tanks, so far 1034 have been developed.
Zilla Parishad Chairperson Lalam Bhavani emphasised the importance of maintaining and improving tanks that have been dug a long time ago and conserving water.
Irrigation Chief Engineer, North Andhra, M.T. Raju, Superintendent Engineer, Visakhapatnam R. Nageswara Rao, retired Chief Engineer S. Satyanarayana, retired SEs Narayana Raju and Brahmanaiah participated.
