Steep fall in water level at Yeleru worries RINL - Report

BL reported that Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited is keeping its fingers crossed as water at Yeleru has touched much below the minimum draw down level.

With the drought reducing the level at the reservoir and recent rains in the Agency belt mostly going down the hill to catchments areas of Orissa, RINL has asked Visakhapatnam Industrial Water Supply Company to pump from the dead storage of Yeleru Reservoir to sustain the present supplies till the situation improves.

Pumping from dead storage was resorted to during severe drought in 2002-03 from December 2002 to August 2003. The State Government consent is awaited to go ahead with pumping from dead storage this time, which would be continued till attaining of sufficient water levels.

Now the situation is quite alarming. Godavari water supplied through VIWSCO is stored at Kanithi Balancing Reservoir. The normal practice is to keep stocks for two months. Against a normal dispatch of 40 million gallons per day, VSP gets 34 MGD due to transmission losses.

The consumption, which used to be 25 MGD, is going up as expansion project is being implemented vigorously. Once the capacity is increased to 6.3 million tonnes per annum, VSP’s requirement will go up by at least five MGD. A senior official of VIWSCO told The Hindu that they had asked the VSP management to meet the additional expenses being incurred on pumping from dead water storage.

During 2002-03 when pumping was undertaken from dead water storage, the Yeleru Left Main Canal was under the control of Irrigation Department. VIWSCO, a special purpose vehicle with RINL, NTPC, APIIC and Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation was incorporated in 2004 to meet industrial and domestic water requirement.

The two phase INR 650 crore project envisages abstracting Godavari water through a 56 kilometer pipeline into 153 kilometer Yeleru canal for further conveyance. GVMC and APIIC took over the administration of the project after the exit of L&T.

(Sourced from http://www.steelguru.com/news/index/2009/09/14/MTExNTc4/Steep_fall_in_water_level_at_Yeleru_worries_RINL_-_Report.html)

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