Forty-year-old N.Narappa Reddy from a remote Pakala village in Prakasam district was growing wet crops, including paddy, two decades ago thanks to good storage in the Paleru-Bitragunta (PB) anicut.
With the anicut losing water holding capacity due to heavy accumulation of silt, he switched over to rain-fed crops. Even this he could not save due to acute shortage of water. In the last six years, he could not grow any crop in his farm, laments the farmer showing the accumulated silt in the medium irrigation project constructed across the Paleru river in 1962.
Similar is the condition of the fellow farmers coming under the ayacut designed to irrigate more than 7,500 acres of land in the mandals of Singarayakonda and Jarugumalli with a catchment area of 2,102 sq km.
“I have switched over to social forestry plantation in view of uncertainty in release of water from the anicut,” explains another farmer from Singarayakonda D.Haribabu, who holds 10 acres of land.
Flood effect
Their trouble started when the project lost water storage capacity due to heavy silt formation in the wake of unprecedented floods in 1996, explains Ch.Srikanth, removing the shrubs from his farm in Bitragunta village.
It has been estimated that 1.25 lakh cubic metres of sand accumulated over a period reducing the water holding capacity of the project by more than 50%.
The YSR Congress Party government should pay immediate attention to desilting of the anicut, Prakasam district Rythu Sangham secretary D.Gopinath said. The government should allow sand mining to generate revenue through sale of fine quality sand and restore the water holding capacity of the anicut to the originally envisaged capacity, he added.
