Hyderabad: In these times when the State is facing a stingy monsoon, with 22 out of 33 districts reporting deficit rainfall, the far-reaching impact of theKaleswaram Lift Irregation Porject is becoming all the more visible. In fact, the cascading effect of the project on the groundwater table in the State, and which has been helping farmers, is one side that many have failed to see, but one that cannot be denied.
According to studies by the State Groundwater Department, there has been an average increase of 5.36 metres in the State, with the table going up by 10 metres in some districts. This improvement in the groundwater levels has led to farmers, who use bore-well and open-well irrigation in about 35 lakh acres in the State, increasingly using groundwater for irrigation purposes, with the help of the round the clock power supply.
Officials say the increase in groundwater levels did not happen overnight, and could be attributed to the double impact of Kaleshwaram and Mission Kakatiya.
As part of Mission Kakatiya, construction of check dams and big reservoirs was taken up across the State, while 20,000 tanks and check dams were integrated with major and medium irrigation projects. With a majority of these tanks being filled at regular intervals, water had become perennially available in the State, Groundwater Department Director Pandith Madhnure said.
Pointing out that in sharp contrast to the situation in the State prior to 2014, there was no farmer in Telangana now complaining of dry bore-wells or open wells, officials said about 30 lakh borewells and thousands of open wells were rejuvenated, as a consequence of which irrigation using these had gone up.
According to estimates of the Groundwater department, the groundwater reserve in the State was 680 thousand million cubic feet (TMC). Out of this, farmers were utilizing only about 250 TMC, which was not a negative development, but a necessary one, since if this extraction was not done, the groundwater table would have touched ground level, which in turn can cause water-logging and salinity in farm lands.
“Knowingly or unknowingly, this is also going according to the guidelines of the Central Water Commission, which advocates conjunctive use of surface and groundwater,” officials said.
“The CWC, while clearing projects, puts the condition that project authorities should encourage conjunctive use of surface and groundwater. The CWC issued Irrigation planning clearance for utilization of 240 TMC in Kaleshwaram projects, out of which 25 TMC is groundwater. The Ministry of Water Resources has now made this compulsory as well, especially in command areas of major projects like SRSP, NSP, Nizamsagar and Kaleshwaram,” a senior Irrigation official said.
“There is no doubt that extraction of groundwater has increased due to the abundance of water. At the same time, increase in groundwater recharge through applied irrigation has also increased, leading to sustainability of bore wells and open/dug wells. Filling of medium and minor irrigation tanks at regular intervals is also one of the major reasons for abundance of water in tanks in turn leading to recharge,” Madhnure said, adding that groundwater extraction had also come down from 65 percent during 2017 to 42 percent during 2022.
“There is also an increase in annual groundwater resources by more than 200 TMC during 2022 as compared to 2013, according to the Groundwater Estimation Committee. During the same period, groundwater extraction has increased by only 91 TMC,” he said.
All this had to be considered an impact of the Kaleshwaram Project, the ultimate targets of which is the irrigation of a new ayacut of 18,25,700 acres and stabilisation of 18,82,970 acres of existing ayacut under Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP) Stage-1 & Stage-2, Flood Flow Canal (FFC), Singur and Nizamsagar Projects, officials said, adding that of the targeted new ayacut, 2.5 lakh acres was already being irrigated.
Water was provided for irrigation during the last three years including new ayacut and stabilization of existing ayacut under SRSP Stage-1 below LMD, SRSP Stage-2, Nizamsagar projects, in the form of crucial wettings at critical periods in the crop cycle for the standing crop, they said.
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