The Irrigation Advisory Board meeting of Anantapur district has been hanging fire for the past several days due to lack of understanding among the people’s representatives over sharing of available water. The district has been reserving 10 tmcft of water for drinking purposes and last two years this quantum was taken from the High Level Canal of the Tungabhradra Dam.
Anantapur Urban MLA Anantha Venkatarami Reddy suggested at the last IAB meeting in 2019 that 5 tmcft be reserved from the Tungabhadra and another 5 tmcft from Krishna water coming through Hundri Neeva Sujala Sravanthi canal. Dharmavaram, Penukonda, Madakasira and Singanamala are the constituencies, where the farmers too have been very vocal on getting their share of water.
Meet put off
A cold war is running in the district among the people’s representatives in deciding which canal gets how much and to settle this issue a meeting with district in-charge Minister was scheduled on September 18 in Vijayawada, which got postponed to September 23. With the share of distribution of available water not being finalised, currently all the water is being fed to village tanks.
Meanwhile, the Mid Pennar Reservoir dam is nearing its full reservoir level and may necessitate release of water into the Penna river after 12 years. The last time such a situation arose in September 2008. A ‘Dandora’ (announcement) was made on Saturday in Penakacherla, Tarimella, and Rachapall in the downstream villages of MPR Dam to caution the likely inundation due to lifting of gates. If water is released into Penna, it goes into Chagallu Reservoir, which is also surplessing now. As on Monday, 4.1 tmcft is available in MPR Dam against a capacity of 5.2 tmcft.
Now the water water coming from Tungabhadra can be diverted to Penna Ahobilam Balancing Reservoir (PABR), a drinking water source for Anantapur city that has 11 tmcft capacity, but never stored above 5.1 tmcft. For this diversion, a link canal has built from Mopidi to PABR, which got breached last month, but has not been lined so far at breach point. A poor quality of work done in the 2019 breach at the same point led to this year’s breach.
HLC Superintending Engineer Nayakanti Rajasekhar told The Hindu that they asked for reduction of water released from Tungabhadra and the repair of link canal taken up on Wednesday. He hopes TB Dam water can be fed into PABR from Saturday.