With the Sripada Yellampalli Project (SYP) receiving copious inflows following the recent rains and authorities releasing the surplus waters into the sea, the irrigation authorities have intensified work on the second phase of the project by lifting the water from the barrage to provide irrigation in the upland Vemulawada and Choppadandi Assembly segments.
The authorities have already constructed pump houses at Vemmunuru village in Ramagundam mandal and Medaram in Dharmaram mandal and held a dry run successfully. They also constructed a pump house at Gangadhara and are taking all measures to conduct trial run for the lifting of water.
Minister for Irrigation T. Harish Rao would be visiting Karimnagar district on September 22 to conduct trial run of the pump houses for lifting waters to fill the irrigation sources in Vemulawada and Choppadandi. Yellampalli project SE Vijay Bhaskar Rao said that they had decided to provide irrigation to 1.68 lakh acres in Karimnagar district from the project. The SYP was receiving heavy inflows since July second week onwards following good rainfall in its catchment area and release of flood waters from the Kadem project in neighbouring Adilabad district. Against the storage capacity of 20.175 tmc of water, the project received water to full capacity and released the surplus flood waters into the sea. The authorities are maintaining a capacity of 19.50 tmc in the reservoir.
As several tmc of surplus flood waters were released into the sea, the Minister for Irrigation had instructed the officials to expedite the second phase of work of lifting waters from the project to provide irrigation in Karimnagar district by completing the construction of pump houses. A week ago, he had personally inspected the works in Medaram pump house.
With the SRSP receiving heavy inflows into the project, the SYP authorities have decided to use the existing waters from the project for irrigation requirements and intensified the pump house works. Accordingly, the SYP authorities are taking all measures for the trial run of the pump houses to fill the tanks in Vemulawada and Choppadandi segments and provide irrigation to 40,000 acres in the first phase.
