Reservoir Impact Assessment on Land Use/Land Cover and Infrastructure—A Case Study on Polavaram Project

The present study aims to estimate the loss of land use/cover and infrastructure facilities due the submergence by constructing the reservoir over the River Godavari at Polavaram Village. Detailed Land use/cover mapping has been carried out using LISS-III sensor data of IRS P6 satellite and linked to socio-economic data to analyze the administrative boundary wise environmental impact assessment in the study area. Land use/cover features are estimated from the Remote Sensing data through visual interpretation. Area covered below the 45.72 m contour above the mean sea level (MSL) is taken as submerged area due to the dam construction. Total area under submergence is estimated to be 58,658 ha, where 159 villages of three districts are affected by the project. The total population to be rehabilitated is about 1.2 lakhs, out of which maximum affected are Scheduled Tribes (58,781). Besides this, about 311 educational institutions, 202 medical institutions, 37 credit institutions and 55 postal institutions will be submerged due to the project. Further, nine mining sites, 24 tourist/historical sites and 78 agro-based industries will be displaced. The total road length of 673 km will go under submergence.