TS says AP dumping soil, filling up Srisailam

The Telangana state government has said that the AP irrigation department was allowing deliberate destruction of the Srisailam reservoir by letting the contractor of the Veligonda project dump vast quantities of rock and soil being dug up at the project site into the reservoir.

TS irrigation department's engineer-in-chief C. Muralidhar, taking this practice to the notice of the Krishna River Management Board, said in a letter that the material excavated from the tunnel work of the Veligonda project from Kothuru in Dornal of Kurnool district was being dumped along the bank of the Krishna river on the Andhra Pradesh side.

Muralidhar, when asked about this development, told Deccan Chronicle that the dumping was a "grave irregularity". He said the practice could have been going on ever since work on the project was started by Andhra Pradesh.

In his letter, Muralidhar said the Srisailam reservoir was witnessing a diminishing of its holding capacity, and the fresh addition of tunnel waste would contribute to a further reduction.

The Srisailam reservoir, when it first began filling up after completion of its construction in 1981, was designed to hold 308 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) of water. With no effective siltation mitigation measures over the years, its capacity fell to around 215 tmc ft by 2011. As per KRMB's data, currently, the Srisailam reservoir’s total water holding capacity is no more than 178.74 tmc ft.

The waste being dumped in the reservoir by, he said, was a hazardous mix of explosive compounds which will affect cultivation and drinking water quality of the Krishna river water, Muralidhar warned.