The irrigation and revenue authorities have issued a red alert to people of 12 villages along the river course of Kaddam to vacate their homes immediately as the nightmare of unprecedented flood to the Kaddam Narayana Reddy project in the upstream is repeated for the second year in a row. They were being shifted to nearby government installations/relief camps.
Against the designed discharge capacity of 3.82 lakh cusecs through 18 spillway gates, the flood waters being let out was only around 2.42 lakh cusecs through 14 gates as the project engineers made a vain bid to operate/lift the remaining 4 gates. According to the irrigation authorities gate numbers 2, 4, 6 and 12 were struck and there was no chance of operating them now.
However, according to officials the flood reaching the project is estimated at 3.86 lakh cusecs although unofficial reports put it at much higher. With the impact of higher flood reaching the dam, beyond its discharge capacity, the flood water is flowing over the 4 crest gates that were not operational.
The water level in the project was approaching 700 feet with the top of the dam having a height of 71.34 feet and the maximum height of earthen dam on the sides of the spillway is 716.7 feet. According to the irrigation authorities, it was on July 13 last year, the project received a flood of 5.19 lakh cusecs and they were able to discharge over 3 lakh cusecs as one of the 18 crest gates was not operated due to mechanical snag.
Maintenance of the gates was taken up during off-flood season and it was being thought that everything is fine with them. However, the engineers again failed to lift three gates last week when the project received heavy flood over 2.5 lakh cusecs.
Minister for Endowments and Law A. Indrakaran Reddy and local MLA A. Rekha Naik rushed to the project site to assess the flood situation and to infuse confidence among the project staff. The Minister said all the gates were repaired and operated after off-flood period after the last year’s flood. They were lifted earlier this season and few of them got struck again last week and said they could only pray for decrease in the flood to project now, the Minister said.
Jurala flood release
Meanwhile, release of flood at Narayanpur dam across the Krishna and Sannathi Barrage across the Bhima rivers, both in Karnataka, have enabled the authorities at Jurala to lift the spillway gates around 12.05 am on Thursday (Wednesday-Thursday intervening night). The project was getting 42,000 cusecs flood at 9 am and discharge through two spillway gates was 8,300 cusecs and another 44,100 cusecs water was also being let into river by operating six units of the power house.
Karnataka irrigation authorities have alerted Telangana authorities that discharge of flood at Almatti would be increased from 1.25 lakh cusecs to 1.5 lakh cusecs after 11 am and that at Narayanpur from 21,100 cusecs to 70,000 cusecs after 10 am.
