Barring block 7, Medigadda barrage safe to use, say officials

The CWPRS was engaged by the State government along with two other Central agencies for further investigations.

Hyderabad: The Medigadda barrage, part of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP), which was inspected by the Central Water and Power Research Station (CWPRS) team as part of its geotechnical and geophysical investigations, was deemed to be safe, despite persisting issues pertaining to its seventh block.

The CWPRS was engaged by the State government along with two other Central agencies for further investigations.

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Gaps that occurred beneath the seventh block raft system due to failure of secant piles were suspected to have caused sagging of the 20th pillar of the seventh block while the structures in the seven other blocks were found to be intact and sound enough to support resumption of water lifting operations, according to officials.

They are of the opinion that the barrage could be put to use by taking up sand and cement grouting to fill the gaps caused due to dislocation of underground soils beneath the raft system.

The L&T, which has been engaged for implementation of the interim works recommended by the NDSA team, has already commenced the works.

Efforts are on to complete them under a time-bound programme well before the monsoon sets in bringing floods in the river.

By all means, they wanted to complete a major part of the works on the structure in the river bed by June 10, so that even heavy floods would not hamper the work progress.

The Irrigation officials, after several rounds of stock taking done in all its eight blocks with an end to end investigation, defended the project, stating that the sinking of barrage pillars was a minor occurrence and that the project remained safe.

The implementing agency had completed the mandatory electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) tests for imaging subsurface structures covering all the eight block of the project.

The structural issues spotted in the seven block also could be addressed by completed the necessary tests for which sophisticated equipment was being acquired as desired by the central organisations, that were tasked with the job, they said.