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Paying big for small mistakes
The humongous effort of lifting waters from 71 meters above mean sea level (MSL) at Godavari river to 540 MSL at Tapaspalli through the state-of-art technology Devadula Lift Irrigation Scheme (LIS) is often petering out due to failure of air valves in piping system and more often owing to human interventions leading to the wastage of water in huge volumes.
Warangal: The humongous effort of lifting waters from 71 meters above mean sea level (MSL) at Godavari river to 540 MSL at Tapaspalli through the state-of-art technology Devadula Lift Irrigation Scheme (LIS) is often petering out due to failure of air valves in piping system and more often owing to human interventions leading to the wastage of water in huge volumes.
Since the trial run of the Devadula LIS Phase-I in 2008, the project has been mired in controversies for various reasons like frequent bursting of pipes, damages to motors and other technical problems.
Finally when the engineers overcame these problems, the project faced non-availability of water at the intake point of the Godavari, Gangaram. It may be noted here that the project, said to be Asia’s biggest LIS project in terms of the distance and height covered, launched in 2004 aiming to irrigate 6.21 lakh acres in the three drought-parched districts - Warangal, Nalgonda and Karimnagar.
Against this backdrop, every now and then the news of pipeline puncture propelling water skyward has become very common somewhere in the 190-km long pipeline between Gangaram under Etur Nagaram mandal and Tapaspalli reservoir under Cherial mandal.
This has become an opportunity for the politicos to blame their counterparts citing it as substandard works of the LIS. However, there are other reasons as well for the leakage of the pipeline. While the irrigation officials attribute it as a minor glitch in the air valve mechanism that is bound to happen by default, the other reason is human intervention.
There are several instances that farmers tampering with the air valve system for their water needs. The phenomenon is rampant between Dharmasagar and Tapaspalli as this upward area is drought-prone.
Speaking to The Hans India, Devadula LIS Superintending Engineer K Veeraiah said: “Actually it’s not leakage in the pipeline. The displacement of the ball and socket arrangement in the air valve is a common problem.
When it malfunctions, the water is propelled to 20 to 30 meters upwards due to the pressure created by the high-powered motors (2X13,000 HP motors).” Although the Operations and Maintenance teams are on the vigil, it takes a bit of time to set the things right, the SE said.
Responding to the two leakages of water instances in three days, he ruled out leakage or breakage of pipeline. If there is any breakage in the pipeline, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system which monitors the pumping pressure alerts the staff to turn off the motors to save water from wastage.
Meanwhile, the government has directed the Irrigation department to install butterfly valves, which can be used for isolating or regulating flow. These valves allow the authorities to supply water to tanks and ponds. These valves will be installed between Dharmasagar and Tapaspalli, according to officials.
By: Adepu Mahender
