Hyderabad, July 31: Major irrigation minister P Laxmaiah said that a law would be brought soon to prevent water wastage in command areas. An ordinance would be issued, if necessary, to implement the rule immediately, he said.
Briefing newsmen after a review meeting here today, Laxmaiah said water from the Nagaruna Sagar project was being released for 170 days against the needed 120- 130 days causing shortage of 50-80 tmc every year.
Water would be released to the flood flow canal of the Sriram Sagar project in a couple of days on a trial basis to feed the lower Maner project. The command area under the Nagarjuna Sagar project would also get water soon, he said.
Water would be impounded in the Yellampally project (it can store up to three tmc as of now) with inflows coming from the Kadem project for the first time.
Following inflows from the Jaikwad project of Odisha, about 39 tmc of water had been impounded in the Sriram Sagar. From Almatty project, about 1.9 lakh cusecs was being released and it would reach the Srisailam project soon taking the storage in the project to about 70 tmc, the minister said.
About 134 monitoring stations would work on the Godavari and Krishna rivers to check flood damages and the flood situation would be closely monitored by the remote sensing agency, he added.
In order to improve farm yield, a joint programme would be taken up with the agriculture department.
About 10,000 soil samples from the Nagarjuna Sagar project area were analysed and found to be deficient in micro nutrients like boron and sulfur. If these nutrients were added to the soil, the income from each acre would go up by about Rs 5,000, the minister explained.
–Agencies