Decks have beeen cleared for irrigating a part of the ayacut under under the inter-State Channakha-Korata (Rudha) Barrage across the Penganga river with the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF) issuing Environmental Clearance to the project nearly four years after the process began in April 2019.
A communication intimating the issuance of EC was sent to the Chief Engineer (Projects) of Irrigation in Adilabad on Friday. Terms of reference (ToR) for the appraisal of the project was issued in September 2016 and the proposal for EC was submitted in April 2019.
According to officials, the environmental clearance is given for the first phase of the project with an ayacut of 16,500 acres that gets water directly from the barrage. In the second phase, the remaining ayacut out of the total irrigation potential of 51,000 acres would get water with two phases of pumping.
The inter-State barrage was taken up in 2015 with a storage capacity of 0.8 tmc ft and utilisaton of water is 1.5 tmc ft. The dry run of the first stage pumping of the project is already completed. The project was taken up with a cost of ₹400 crore but the changes in the project scope and capacity has increased the cost to about ₹800 crore.
Main canal system of the project had already been completed but the land acquisition for distributaries was under progress, the irrigation officials said . The ayacut that gets water under the project is spread in 14 villages of Thamsi, Jainath, Bela and Bhimpur mandals. In Maharashtra, 9 villages in Kelapur tehsil of Yavatmal district in Maharashtra would also get water under the project.
Salient Features of Channakha-Korata Barrage
Length of Barrage 342 metres, maximum height 10 metres
It will have 23 gates
Main canal runs for 3.36 km in Telangana from right bank
Distributaries run for another 30 km
Maharashtra ayacut to get water from left bank with pipe distribution network
Pump house is located in the upstream of the barrage at Hathighat village
It will have four pumps of 1.92 megawatt capacity each for lifting water to Telangana ayacut
Published - January 13, 2023 06:42 pm IST
