A team of the Central Water Commission (CWC) visited the Polavaram irrigation project on Sunday and verified the condition of the main dam in view of the recent heavy discharges from it during the Godavari floods.
CWC Embankments Director Deepak Chandra Bhatt, Director (spillway) Kayum Mohammad and Assistant Director Gaurav Tiwari, along with Polavaram Project Superintending Engineer (SE) K. Narasimha Murthy, MEIL vice-president Rangarajan and chief general manager M. Muddu Krishna inspected the project.
They visited the upper and lower coffer dams, spillway and the main dam area to see the impact of the flood.
Mr. Deepak Chandra enquired with the Water Resources Department (WRD) officials about the condition of the dam, while Mr. Kayum asked the MEIL officials about the condition of the spillway after the release of water.
Mr. Narasimha Murthy explained to the CWC officials that the height of the upper coffer dam had been raised by one metre to 44 metre during the recent Godavari floods, during which the highest water level was recorded in July as per the data of the last 100 years.
The CWC officials said that the Polavaram project might receive about 30 lakh cusecs of water and alerted the WRD and the MEIL authorities. Following the directions of Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, who conducted an aerial survey of the flood situation, the upper coffer dam height had been raised.
“The height of the coffer dam has been raised by one metre after alerting the CWC officials. However, the discharge from the project was put at 25.8 lakh cusecs,” said Polavaram Project Chief Engineer B. Sudhakar Babu.
