The decision of the West Godavari district administration to release Godavari water into the canals from Wednesday came as a relief to the people in the delta region who have been facing acute drinking water shortage. The canals, which were closed on April 10 after the harvest of rabi crop to facilitate the delta modernisation works, resumed water supply on Wednesday.
The district administration came under tremendous pressure from the people’s representatives and other sections of the society to initiate steps to end the water woes. Palacol TDP MLA-designate Nimmala Rama Naidu and his party MLC Angara Rammohan Rao met Collector Siddharth Jain on Tuesday with a plea to address the issue.
The farmers were also waiting for the canals to open so that they could raise seedbeds for khariff season. Godavari Circle Executive Engineer Srinivasa Rao said that the Irrigation Department had decided to release water from the Dowleswaram Barrage in small quantities initially to meet the drinking water needs first.
Summer storage tanksThe district has witnessed an unprecedented scarcity for drinking water this summer as most of the summer storage tanks went dry much before the reopening of canals.
Meanwhile, the Rural Water Supply Department has already identified water-starved villages in Bhimavaram, Palacol and Narsapur mandals. The officials have been supplying water to these areas through tankers for over a week.
“The water available in the tanks is only sufficient to meet the drinking needs for a week. If the Godavari water failed to reach the tanks, the situation would have been quite alarming,” says an official of the RWS Department. Meanwhile, people in several delta villages complained that the water supplied from the storage tanks was muddy and not fit for drinking.
