The Central Water Commission of Andhra Pradesh has received a letter from the state government requesting to correct incongruities in calculating discharge of water at Polavaram project, as this could lead to misunderstandings among stakeholders of the project, along with the neighbouring states. In order to gauge discharge of water from reservoirs, CWC installs equipment at various irrigation projects, which is helpful to note how much water is being preserved and discharged from various projects in various states.
However, water resource officials found differences in discharge of water at Polavaram project during recent floods in Godavari river. For instance, if 20 lakh cusecs of water is being discharged downstream into Godavari at Bhadrachalam, in 24 hours, nearly 20.10 lakh cusecs of water get discharged at Sir Arthur Cotton barrage in Dowleswaram. The additional 10,000 cusecs of water in the river is from tributaries such as Sabari and Sileru.
As stated by authorities, the state is facing trouble from Telangana, Odisha and Chattisgarh, as they have moved the Supreme Court complaining about submergence of their low-lying areas allegedly due to backwaters from Polavaram project. States like Odisha and Chhattisgarh are yet to hold public meetings on this issue.
They have also not assessed the environmental impact. They are reportedly not showing much interest in settling the issue expeditiously, even though Andhra Pradesh has offered either to compensate for loss due to submergence or strengthen flood banks to avoid inundation once they chair public meetings.