Tribunal to act quick on Krishna water allocation

below the minimum draw down or dead storage level.Though both governments agree that the situation is worsening, there is no common strategy to divert and utilise Godavari water for the dams.

The YS Rajasekhar government had a plan to link the Godavari with the Krishna through the Dummugudem anicut in Kothagudem district to the Nagarjunasagar tail pond project (Adavidevulapally). Water can be pumped back to Nagarjunasagar from the tail pond project using reversible turbines that are already in place.

The plan was shelved after the TRS government came to power in 2014 and confined the Dummugudem link lift scheme to the erstwhile Khammam district.

The goverment believes that there is no guarantee that the Andhra Pradesh government would share the common cost of the project, though it would also benefit. The Godavari can come to the rescue of the Krishna. But that needs a quick action by the Justice Brijesh Kumar tribunal and cooperation between the two Telugu states.

The tribunal has not divided Krishna waters between the Telugu states. TS and AP will not move on the matter till they know how much water they will get.

The tribunal is working on redistributing the 1,004 tmc ft of Krishna waters allocated by Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal (KWDT)-2 between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states.

The present arrangement, as decided by the Central water resources ministry, is that AP can use 512 tmc ft and Telangana 299 tmc ft out of the 811 tmc ft allotted by the KWDT-1. But even this quantum of water has not reached the two dams for the last three years.

Both TS and AP have started spending huge funds to pump water from surplus to deficit areas. The PranahithaKaleswaram lift irrigation project of the TS government is estimated to cost nearly `1 lakh crore.

After the successful completion of the Pattiseema lift scheme, which brings the Godavari water to the Krishna, the AP government is now planning to lift 500 tmc ft of the Godavari water to the Somasila project in Nellore district, covering command areas of different projects en route. The estimates for the project cost have not been prepared but a ball park figure is `50,000 crore.

While agreeing that the Godavari water could be diverted to Nagarjunasagar and Srisailam to make up for water scarcity in the Krishna when it is felt in TS, irrigation minister T. Harish Rao said, “It will need a combined effort by both TS and AP governments in deciding various logistics and sharing of cost. But, first, the Brijesh Kumar tribunal has to decide the Krishna allocations between our two states so that we can think of diverting the Godavari.”