The issue of sharing of Krishna waters by Telangana and Andhra Pradesh States resulted in heated exchanges between the irrigation officials of the rank of Superintending Engineers of the two States at Nagarjunasagar project site in Nalgonda district on Tuesday and the two sides approached Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) by evening.
Official sources stated that the engineers of Nagarjunasagar project, management of which is controlled by Telangana Government, reduced the quantity of water being released (let into) to the NSP Right Canal stating that of the 18.5 TMC ft water allocated to AP by KRMB on February 10, less than one TMC ft was left to be utilised and the remaining quantity would flow down within a few hours.
However, after getting the information that the flow into the Right Canal was reduced, a Superintending Engineer from Macheral in Guntur district rushed to project site and entered into an argument with his Telangana counterpart questioning the latter as to how the flow was reduced when another 4 TMC ft water was due to be drawn by them (AP). The KRMB in its recent meeting had cleared drawl of 18.5 TMC ft by AP and 15.5 TMC ft by Telangana for immediate needs of irrigation and drinking water. Engineers of NSP stated that water storage in the reservoir was 135.61 TMC ft at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, including 98.65 TMC ft of dead storage. Considering the minimum draw down level water can, however, be drawn till the storage is reached 131.6 TMC ft.
Transmission losses
Over 11,400 cusecs was being let out through Right and Left Canals. When contacted, NSP engineers explained that the release of 9,000 cusecs to Right Canal was gradually reduced to 3,600 cusecs by Tuesday evening taking into account sharing the transmission and evaporation losses between the two States.
The AP engineers were understood to have argued that based on the water received at the Macherla monitoring station another 4 TMC ft water was due from out of 18.5 TMC ft allocated by KRMB recently. They refused to take into account the losses. But, the Telangana engineers contended that they were maintaining records of the outflow the Right Canal head and the allocated quantity including losses would be reached by Tuesday midnight.
The two engineers took the issue to their respective Chief Engineers and in turn the issue was taken to the notice of higher officials on the two sides and also to KRMB officials in the absence of telemetry equipment to measure the water releases at various drawl points exactly.
