The East Godavari district authorities are on high alert to avoid any untoward incident as water level in the Godavari started rising following inflows from its tributary Indravathi. A control room has been set up to monitor the situation at Sir Arthur Cotton (SAC) Barrage at Dowleswaram.
The flood mitigation report-2020, prepared by the Irrigation Department, has warned that 87 villages in the East Godavari district and 50 villages in the West Godavari district would be affected due to submergence upstream of the Polavaram project due to partial completion of the cofferdam when the inflow reaches 5 lakh cusecs at the SAC Barrage.
The control room authorities said that the water level at the barrage was 10.60 feet on Monday morning. The inflow was above 28,000 cusecs and the discharge 15,000 cusecs. Flood water has been flowing into the Godavari for the past four days, they added.
Officials led by East Godavari Collector D. Muralidhar Reddy constituted a team of four Executive Engineers (Irrigation Department) to monitor the flood situation upstream of the cofferdam.
Brisk progress
Irrigation Minister P. Anil Kumar claimed in his recent visit to the project that construction of more than 10,000 houses in the rehabilitation colonies is in final stages and they are expected to be handed over to the oustees by early July.
Mr. Muralidhar Reddy said evacuation operations would begin based on the level at the Kunavaram point, 110 km from the SAC barrage. The situation would also be assessed based on the level at Koida, 96 km from SAC Barrage, and Polavaram,45 km from SAC Barrage. The team of officials has been deployed at K.R. Puram, Devipatnam, Yetapaka and Chintoor to alert the district authorities.
