Ahead of the first anniversary of the bifurcation of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, the Chandrababu Naidu government is not in a celebratory mood, in contrast to the triumphal attitude of his counterpart in Telangana, K. Chandrasekhar Rao.
As one political analyst said, “It is a dilemma for him. He cannot celebrate the formation of residuary Andhra Pradesh as the people of Seemandhra opposed bifurcation all through and he himself was ambivalent about it. But neither can the government ignore the day altogether.”
Mr. Naidu has resolved to observe June 2 as a day for ‘Nava Nirmana Deeksha’ (building a new State).
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Amaravathi, the planned capital city of Andhra Pradesh, is most likely to be elevated by 2 metres to protect it from the Krishna river and the flood-prone Kondaveeti Vaagu reservoir.
The initiative is likely to cost about Rs. 1,500 crore, according to the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA).
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“We can’t have a city with floods. The Kondaveeti Vaagu inundates 13,000 acres with about three TMC water each year. Elevating 10,000 acres of the capital city is one solution on the cards, and the initiative costs around Rs. 1,500 crore. Technically, they felt it’s worth it,” CRDA Commissioner N. Srikanth said. This apart, there are also plans to route water through drainage system, reservoirs, widening of channels and building flood gates, he said.
Apparently, the Singapore planners were able to identify the problem immediately because of a similar experience they had with the Singapore River, according to a senior engineer of the Irrigation Department, who was part of the capital planning team. Using various strategies, they were able to reduce the area being inundated from 370 acres to 120 acres in Singapore, he said.
Small reservoirs
“They [Singapore] built small reservoirs at different points to retain the run-off. They also built the Marina Barrage at the mouth of the river. The water in the barrage was used according to need. Besides having structures and small tanks to retain water at different places, two big reservoirs, which can hold more than one tmcft, have been incorporated in the plan,” said the engineer who did not wish to be named.
The on-line reservoir will be somewhere between Nidamarru, Neeru Konda and Tadikonda, while the off-line reservoir will be near Vaddamanu. The off-line reservoir will be a high-level one, and water will have to be pumped up to it.