Page:Gódávari.djvu/155

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MEANS OF COMMUNICATION.
129

to rise above three miles an hour. It was proposed to evade the obstruction caused by the barriers by cutting canals provided with locks along the side of the river past the . impassable points.

The project was warmly accepted by Government, arid, on their strong recommendation, was sanctioned by the Court of Directors. It was however never completed. The estimated cost of the whole scheme, which was designed to render the river navigable for 473 miles above the anicut for four or five months of the year, and to open out to traffic 300 miles of its tributaries, was £292,000. Up to 1861 £20,000 had been laid out in preliminary surveys, etc. In 1863, when Sir Richard Temple inspected the works, no less than £700,000 had been spent. He recommended that the works at the first and second barriers and up to the foot of the third barrier should be proceeded with at an estimated cost of £255,000, so that navigation might be opened so far; but in October 1871, at the request of the Government of India, the whole scheme was abandoned on the ground that it involved an expenditure which did not give promise of any adequate return.1[1]

It has never been revived. There is a fine lock and anicut at Dummagúdem and a canal (two miles in length) which is still used. Cargo boats can as a rule pass through it between June and January, and small boats throughout the year, except when it is closed for repairs. At the second barrier at Enchampalli, are a partly-completed anicut and the remains of unfinished locks and excavations. The Dummagúdem works were damaged in the flood of 1900, and estimates, amounting to Rs. 1,26,800, for repairing them were sanctioned in 1905 and are now being carried out. It would be a great help to navigation if the canal there could be carried down to Bhadráchalam; but the work would be difficult and costly, as the excavation would be largely in solid rock.

When the Godavari anicut was being built, it was proposed that the canals taking off from it should be so constructed that they would serve tor navigation as well as irrigation. Mr. Walch writes as follows on the subject2[2]: —

"Even when sending in his first general estimate with his second report3[3] Major Cotton had said that one of the results to be expected from the works which he contemplated would be that 'a complete

  1. 1 Statement exhibiting the Material and Moral Progress of India during 1872-73. P 79.
  2. 2 Chapter XI of The Engineering works of the Gódávari Delta (Madras, 1896).
  3. 3 Dated April 17th, 1845.