Human encroachment, rather than rivulet Budameru, is Sorrow of Vijayawada

Wading through the flood waters that inundated over 30 per cent of Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu said a permanent solution to prevent the city from being flooded again would be worked out.

The city, with a population of 21 lakh, has a long history of flooding by two rivers — the Krishna on the southern side and the Budameru, a rivulet that passes on the north-western side of the city. The rivulet is referred to as the Sorrow of Vijayawada, as most of the city's troubles are spawned by its waters.

Torrential rains, floods

The present flooding was compounded by the breaches of Budameru's flood banks at three points as excessive flood water entered the city. This was triggered by heavy rains that lashed the hills of the rivulet’s origin, spread across the NTR district in Andhra Pradesh and Khammam in Telangana.

On August 30 and 31, the region received more than 300 mm of rainfall. As the rivulet’s course was obstructed at every point in its 21-km journey through Vijayawada, the water overflowed and inundated the city.

The Army was deployed to plug the breaches and it could finish the work on Sunday. Though the breaches were plugged, the city, as of Monday, remains submerged in 1.01 TMC of water, forcing nearly six lakh people to suffer for want of water and food.

Naidu’s promise to people

Addressing the media amid the relief operations, Naidu said he would launch ‘Operation Budameru’ soon to prevent massive flooding of Vijayawada city in the future, with due focus on removing the encroachments along its long course.

But Prof KS Chalam, a noted economist and former vice-chancellor of Andhra University, says Naidu’s resolve looks like searching for a solution at a convenient place when the problem is somewhere else.

According to Chalam, encroachments on the flood plains of Budameru are just a part of the problem.

Encroachment on Kolleru

“The Budameru empties into the Kolleru lake, located between the Krisha and Godavari deltas in Eluru district. The lake area has been encroached by rich entrepreneurs to convert the thousands of acres into aquaculture which fetches crores of revenue for them.

(Click on the video below to understand how the encroachments work.)

The shrunken Kolleru, Asia's biggest freshwater lake-cum-bird sanctuary, has no room to accommodate flood waters from Budameru,” he said.

In the 1980s, the Kolleru was a sprawling water body covering 904 sq km. It has been downsized to just 308 sq km now.

Prof R Sukumar of the Wild Life Institute, Uttarakhand, who surveyed the lake on behalf of the Government of India to recommend steps to conserve the lake, recorded the sad state of affairs.

“(The) lake conservation issue is extremely complex with a long history of questionable administrative and management decisions taken by successive state governments in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh,” he stated in his 2015 report.

Politicians to blame

Testifying before the 40th meeting of the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife on January 3, 2017, Sukumar said: “It has been noticed that uncontrolled illegal aquafarms have come up and the socio-economic impact on the livelihoods of local farmers due to the influx of entrepreneurs for both zeroyati (cultivable) and D-patta lands (land assigned to the poor by the government) has complicated the situation.”

Stating that dozens of PhDs were produced on the conservation and restoration of the lake to its 1980 position by prohibiting fishponds, Prof Chalam said the solution for Vijayawada’s urban woes lies in rural areas.

All those affected by the floods are poor and middle-class people who settled on the banks of the Budameru in Vijayawada.

“Who encouraged these promoters of aquaculture? Who are they?” he asked.

Election promises

“Water from Kolleru reaches the Bay of Bengal through Upputeru, a natural channel, which was fully encroached. If the Budameru empties its flow into the Kolleru, it swells to submerge the villages around it, as Upputeru cannot carry the water into the sea. The problem of the Budameru is that it can neither carry flood water nor empty into the Kolleru. So, it is taking its own course to inundate Vijayawada,” said Chalam

Like the way the influx of entrepreneurs into Kolleru lake was allowed, the encroachments on the banks Budameri was also felicitated by political parties.

This was clearly spelt out in a disaster management plan prepared by the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) in 2011. The report, prepared by VMC Commissioner G Ravi Babu, IAS, said the problem of encroachment “is further complicated by the false hopes provided by the politicians during elections. In order to gain votes, some of them even promise to protect these people by assuring that once they are elected, they would legalize their settlements”.

Activists and officials lament

Activist EAS Sarma, a former Central government secretary, echoed the sentiment. “While the rainfall was unusually heavy, flooding of many areas took place due to Budameru breaches and overflowing. Successive governments allowed encroachments and obstructions of Budameru to continue,” he told The Federal.

Ravi Babu’s report concluded that with little or no control over the encroachment on the flood banks, the quality and the structural integrity of the Budameru embankment to withstand the pressure from the flood waters was a matter of significant concern.

Between 2011 and 2024, lakhs of people settled on the flood banks and flood plains of Budameru. The present breaches are a vindication of Ravi Babu’s report. Though three governments — of the Congress, TDP and YSR Congress — ruled the state, the issue failed to bother them.

100-year-old problem

The demand for Budameru flood control is over 100 years old. In 1917, when Gudivada taluk was flooded, farmers raised a hue and cry. As the British government was not of much help, flood relief works were taken up with donations provided by philanthropists.

After Independence, people started demanding the construction of a barrage or at least a channel to divert the Budameru flood water into River Krishna. In 1956, the Socialist Party and Congress leaders agitated for it.

Then Deputy Chief Minister N Sanjeeva Reddy assured them in the Assembly that a diversion scheme would be constructed. But it did not take off.

Union government’s intervention

Following heavy floods in Budameru, the Centre constituted an experts committee under the chairmanship of AC Mitra, engineer-in-chief, Uttar Pradesh, to suggest a comprehensive flood mitigation plan for Vijayawada.

The implementation of the Mitra committee recommendations including the construction of a Budameru Diversion Scheme is still incomplete.

Based on the Mitra panel recommendations, a head regulator was constructed at Velagaleru in G. Konduru mandal in 1970 in order to regulate flood flow, which never appeared to have regulated the flow because of conflict of interests of the farmers in the upper and down reaches.

The Budameru Diversion Channel (BDC), though started 20 year ago, remains incomplete. “The purpose of BDC is to divert the surplus water into the Krishna at Pavitrasangamam, near Ibrahimpatnam through the Vijayawada Thermal Power Station (VTPS). But VTPS opposed the plan,” said Kambampati Papa Rao, a former chief engineer of the Andhra Pradesh government.