HYDERABAD: Annoyed by the frequent flooding of Visakhapatnam airport, which is under Naval control, the Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, has asked State Government officials to revive the earlier plan to construct an international airport in the Steel City.

At the same time, Dr. Reddy asked them to take up necessary measures to find a permanent solution to flooding of the INS Dega airport, which has remained closed for two weeks now. He wanted a team of irrigation engineers, Visakhapatnam district Collector and Municipal Commissioner to study the problem in detail and find ways to rectify the problem.

A high-level meeting chaired by the Chief Minister on Tuesday noted that the present airport was unable to cope with the fast growing needs of air traffic and industrialisation of the port city. Dr. Reddy wanted a suitable stretch of land to be identified for the proposed international airport and the proposals sent to the Civil Aviation Ministry at the earliest.

Dr. Reddy wanted widening of the channels of Meghadrigadda and Kondagadda reservoirs which caused flooding of the airport and the system re-designed to ensure discharge of water from these channels directly into the sea at a cost of Rs. 60 crores to be shared by the Visakhapatnam Urban Development Authority and the Municipal Corporation. He asked the Irrigation Secretary, Satish Chandra, to monitor the works.

Unprecedented rain

Visakhapatnam Collector, Praveen Prakash, informed the Chief Minister that the city recently received 30 cm rainfall in 12 hours, which had no precedent in the last 100 years. This led to inundation of the airport. The problem was aggravated by expansion of the runway to 10,000 feet and upgradation of the airport at a cost of Rs. 200 crores. The Chief Minister, however, asked the officials to go ahead with the expansion under which Rs. 60 crores would be spent on terminal buildings alone.

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