Page:Vizagapatam.djvu/125

 men facing one another, is very common. It generallj spills half its contents each swing. In places an ingenious tool, resembling a long-handled shovel with a string attached to the lower end of the shaft, is used for sprinkling water from the well-channels over garden crops such as ragi and chillies. The shovel is dipped into the water and brought out with a jerk by means of the string.

The tanks are mostly small. Only two of them, namely, the Tiinks. Rdmasdgaram tank in Vakapddu and the Pedda tank of Uppalam, both in Sarvasiddhi taluk, have an ayacut of over 1,00U acres. In the PAlkonda taluk they often have no proper sluices, and the ryots get the water out by cutting the embankments.

A Tank Restoration Party has investigated 142 of these works irrigating JiO,OUO acres assessed at Rs. 55,000, and spent nearly U lakhs upon them. This is expected to raise the area irrigable by them to 22,500 acres and the revenue to Rs. 90.000

The most important sources of irrigation are the channels Channels. from the four rivers already mentioned.

On the Vardha there are eight Government anicuts,* of which the uppermost, the Gabbdda dam, lies three miles north-north-west of Narasapatam, and was built in 1862-63 at a cost of Rs. 17,630. It supplies the tanks at Narasapatam and its neighbour Balighattam. An affluent of the Varaha, known as the Sarpanadi or Kottakota stream, is crossed by five smaller anicuts, a channel from one of which fiRs the natural lake at Kottakota called the Komaravolu dva, which irrigates some 430 acres.

Both the Varaha and Sarada channels are thought to be less constant in supply than in former years and the blame has been laid upon the clearance of the forests on the Golgonda and Mddgole hills.

On the Sarada there are eight anicuts t belonging to Government, the most important of them being the Godari dam, which is the uppermost of the series and supplies the big natural lake called the Konda- karla ava, about six miles south of Anakapalle. This reservoir, which has been artificially enlarged and never