Officials on alert as floodwater flows into Godavari river in Andhra Pradesh

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 Polavaram project

Water in Godavari turns reddish due to entry of floodwater in the river in Rajahmundry.

The district authorities are on high alert to avoid any untoward incident as floodwater started arriving in river Godavari in the East Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh from its tributary, Indravathi.

A control room has been set up to monitor the flood water round the clock in the river Godavari 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 Polavaram project due to partial completion of cofferdam when the inflow of the floodwater reaches to 5 lakh cusecs at the SAC Barrage.

Inflow at SAC Barrage

The control room authorities have said “the water level at the SAC Barrage is 10.60 feet on Monday morning. The inflow of floodwater is above 28000 cusecs and discharge is 15000 cusecs. The floodwater continues to reach the Godavari river from its tributary, Indravathi, for the past four days”.

The officials led by East Godavari Collector D. Muralidhar Reddy have constituted a team of four Executive Engineers (Irrigation Department) to monitor the flood situation upstream of the cofferdam of the Polavaram irrigation project.

Irrigation Minister P. Anil Kumar has claimed in his recent visit to Polavaram project; “The construction of above 10,000 houses in the Polavaram project rehabilitation colonies is in the final stage and expected to be handed over to the oustees by early July”.

Evacuation: According to Mr. Muralidhar Reddy, the evacuation operations would begin based on the flood water level at Kunavaram point, which is 110 kilometers of distance from the SAC barrage. However, the flood level would also be assessed based on the water level at the 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 to swing into evacuation operation to avoid any untoward incident or loss.