The Water Resources Department of Andhra Pradesh started pumping 1,050 cusecs of Godavari River water by running three of the 24 pumps of the Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Scheme to the Krishna Delta on Thursday.
Irrigation Chief Engineer Sudhakar Babu and executive engineer Nagireddy performed puja and switched on the motors. More pumps will be switched on as the flood in the Godavari River increases until the scheme pumped a maximum of 8,500 cusecs into the Polavaram Left Main Canal that carries water to the Krishna River upstream Prakasam Barrage.
In the first year, the scheme lifted 4.20 tmcft using only four pumps that were operational in 2015.
The very next year, all 24 pumps became operational and ever since there has been no dearth of water for farmers of Krishna delta notwithstanding the actual availability of water in the Krishna River.
The scheme worked for 165 days in 2018 pumping 96.4 tmcft and it managed to pump 151 tmcft in 2017 in just 161 days. In the second year, the scheme pumped 55.57 tmcft in 137 days. It pumped 42.99 tmcft in 90 days in 2019, according to the data with the Water Resources Department.
The power consumed by the scheme is proportional to the water pumped. The scheme utilised the maximum of 29,98,17,000 kilowatt hours of power to lift 151 tmcft in 2017 and 27,10,80,000 kilowatt hours of power to lift 96.4 tmcft in 2018.
YSR’s promise
Former Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy had promised Krishna delta farmers that water be released latest by June 15 for the kharif season. His government often fulfilled the promise by managing to release water from the dead storage of Nagarjuna Sagar.
After bifurcation, the release of water for Krishna Delta from the dead storage of the project that had to be shared by the Telugu States became a thing of the past and the Telugu Desam Party, which came to power after that, came up with the Pattiseema scheme to ensure that Krishna Delta farmers got their water in time.
