VSP to get Godavari waters from Dec 30

Visakhapatnam steel plant expects 30 million gallons per day of water from Godavari

The Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) is likely to get the Godavari waters from December 30.

Larsen & Toubro, which has taken up the responsibility of the construction, operation and maintenance of the Visakhapatnam Industrial Water Supply Project (VIWSCO), has already started pumping water from River Godavari since Saturday.

"VSP has contributed close to Rs 240 crore to take up the VIWSCO project. We had, therefore, requested the state government recently to take immediate steps for pumping Godavari waters to mitigate the water crisis at the plant. The state government has agreed to supply Godavari waters to meet VSP's needs and we expect 25 to 30 mgd (million gallons per day) of water from Godavari," a senior official at VSP told Business Standard.

VSP has been getting water from Yeluru reservoir since 1990. As part of the project, VSP invested around Rs 200 crore for constructing a dam on the Yeluru river.

It also constructed Kanithi Balancing Reservoir at VSP and laid a 153-km canal from the Yeluru river to VSP. Though the Yeluru canal project was designed to supply up to 70 mgd, VSP has never received 70 mgd even for a single day in the last 13 years.

At present, Visakhapatnam Steel Plant is using around 28 mgd of water to run the plant. Due to the heavy transmission losses in the Yeluru canal since the last six months, the supply of water to VSP has been severely affected.

Even though the irrigation department took up repair works like de-weeding in October, the water levels at VSP's Kanithi Balancing Reservoir have come down gradually.

Despite the canal repair works, the inflows to the balancing reservoir of the steel plant have come down in November mainly due to pilferages and diversion of water to the Pampa reservoir from the canal.

"The water supply from the Yeluru reservoir to VSP remained highly erratic in the last few months. As a result, VSP had to continuously draw water from its storage reservoir to meet its daily requirements. From December 14, the water supplies to VSP from Yeluru reservoir too were stopped. As of today, water is neither released from the Yeluru reservoir, nor it is pumped from Godavari. The storage is at an alarmingly low level, and any further drop in the levels at the Kanithi Balancing Reservoir will adversely affect the normal operation of the steel plant," the VSP official said.

"The Godavari Pumping Scheme is ready in all respect since September 2004 and was inaugurated by the Andhra Pradesh chief minister on September 25. The system performance trials were also completed on December 7. In view of the critical position of both the Yeluru and the Kanithi reservoirs, the pumping of Godavari waters is required immediately," he added.