Sripada Yellampalli Project (SYP) received copious inflows following rains in its catchment areas, in addition to the flood release from Kadem project in the neighbouring district.
Before the onset of rains, the SYP had only 4.7587 tmcft of water on July 26. With the incessant rains, the Kadem project in Nirmal district released flood waters into the river Godavari adding steady inflows into the Yellampalli project. Moreover, the rains in the catchment areas had also increased inflows into the SYP. On Thursday at 5 p.m., the project had received 8.8679 tmcft of water against its capacity of 20.175 tmcft and inflows of 21,118 cusecs. In four days, the project received more than 4 tmcft of water.
Water lifted
Meanwhile, the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project authorities have successfully lifted the waters from Goliwada pump house to the SYP on Wednesday night. However, the authorities stopped pumping water from the Goliwada pump house following the steady inflows into Yellampalli project.
It may be recalled that it took 24 days to send the Kaleshwaram project waters from Medigadda to Yellampalli project. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had formally inaugurated the pumping of water from Kannepalli pump house near Medigadda on June 21. When the Medigadda project received about 4 tmcft of water, the authorities had lifted the water from Kannepalli pump house from July 7 onwards.
From Kannepalli pump house, after lifting the water into the gravity canal, the water reached Annaram barrage traversing 13.8 km. From Annaram barrage, the water was lifted to Sundilla barrage. Three days back, the Sundilla water reached Goliwada pump house. On Wednesday, the authorities had successfully conducted the wet run by pumping water into the SYP for about 10 minutes and stopped.
Following the successful lifting of water from Medigadda to Yellampalli covering a distance of 111 km under the link-1, the authorities have now focused on link-2 of lifting waters from Yellampalli to Mid-Manair Dam by August 15. The authorities had decided to shift the water from Yellampalli to Nandimedaram tunnel (package 7) on Friday (August 2) under the package 6, 7 and 8 and from there, pump water to see that the water reaches the Laxmipur pump house (package 8) by August 5.
The dream of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao to ensure that water is present all through from Medigadda to Yellampalli project has been fulfilled. Now with the presence of water all along the river Godavari stretch from Kaleshwaram to Yellampalli, the farmers along the river shore are jubilant due to increase of groundwater table and water gushing out of wells and borewells into the fields.
