Two gates of Kaddam project develop problem

Two crest gates of Kaddam Narayana Reddy Project did not function, posing a threat to the structure and forcing the officials concerned to be on toes, on Friday.

Nirmal: Two crest gates of Kaddam Narayana Reddy Project did not function, posing a threat to the structure and forcing the officials concerned to be on toes, on Friday. The irrigation project received copious inflows due to heavy rains in upstream and catchment areas. It recorded inflows of somewhere between 47,000 lakh lakh cusecs and 1.61 cusecs and outflow by 1.37 lakh cusecs from early morning to evening. Water level reached 6.479 tmc as against the storage capacity of 7.603 tmc. Surplus water was discharged by lifting 14 gates.

Assistant Executive Engineer and in-charge of the project said that wire rope of two gates numbered 2 and 3 were snapped while operating. An order was placed for the rope and the problem is going to be fixed by tomorrow. The remaining gates are functioning well. A team of officials are observing the flood situation, he stated.

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Touted to be one of the oldest medium irrigation projects of Telangana, KNRP received record-level inflows by 5.09 lakh cusecs, panicking people living in different villages downstream on July 13 in 2022, panicking locals and authorities. Surplus water was discharged downstream by lifting 17 gates out of the total of 18. The project suffered damages and the main canal was breached.

As per the history of the project, the dam was taken up across Kaddam river, a tributary of Godavari, by the then erstwhile government of Hyderabad to irrigate 68,150 acres of agriculture fields on the northern flank of Godavari in 1949. It was commissioned in 1958. The observed flood was 5.19 lakh cusecs against designed flood discharge of 2.50 lakh cusecs.