A study taken up by a team of irrigation engineers headed by retired Engineer-in-Chief J. Vijay Prakash, who is also an Advisor to the Government on irrigation, for rejuvenation of rivulets and streams in the State has categorised such sources at eight levels and has recommended construction of check-dams without causing any obstruction to flows into dependent tanks.

Based on the recommendation of the team, a workshop was organised for the field-level minor irrigation engineers here on Monday and was attended by engineers in the ranks up to Executive Engineer. Telangana State Water Resources Development Corporation Chairman V. Prakash, Engineer-in-Chief C. Muralidhar, OSD in Chief Minister's office Sridhar Rao Deshpande, Chief Engineer (MI) K. Shyam Sundar and others participated.

Presentation

Speaking at the workshop, Mr. Vijay Prakash explained engineers through a presentation and National Remote Sensing Agency maps the process of identifying streams for construction of check-dams along with locations. He suggested that locations of check-dams should be identified only across level-four or higher level streams with priority to streams in the command areas of irrigation projects.

He explained that there are about 319 check-dams, road-dams, weirs and anicuts constructed across streams of level 4 to 8 having a length of 6,500 km in the Godavari Basin.

Similarly, there were 466 such structures across the same level of stream running for a length of 5,700 km in the Krishna Basin. Most of such structures were made across level 4 streams, he pointed out. However, he stated that still there is scope for construction of check-dams and other such structures across major streams without depriving the flows into minor irrigation tanks and other such storages depending on them. He suggested that distance between two check-dams should be decided based on the local conditions.

Further, he suggested construction of shake-hand check-dams in the command areas of projects in consultation with groundwater department so as to avoid such structured in the areas where groundwater is available at up to 3 meters below ground level. Villages with over-exploited groundwater should be given priority for construction of such structures.

KCR’s initiative

Earlier, Mr. Prakash stated that the study was taken up on the directions of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao as he wanted a comprehensive report along with estimated costs for optimum utilisation of water available in the streams and rivulets. He stated that such structures were already constructed in large numbers in Maharashtra and Karnataka.