MUNIRABAD (KOPPAL): Lakhs of individuals in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh braced for potential flooding after the nineteenth crest gate of the 71-year-old dam throughout the Tungabhadra river failed Sunday afternoon. The dam, about 350km from Bengaluru, noticed water gushing out after the gate gave manner, placing downstream districts in north Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh’s Kurnool and Nandyal on excessive alert.
The Tungabhadra dam, inaugurated in 1953 with a most storage capability of 133TMCFT (thousand million cubic toes), had 100TMCFT of water as of Saturday, with the remaining 33TMCFT being silt.Of the 33 crest gates on the dam, 22 have been opened Saturday night, releasing almost 1 lakh cusecs of water into the river.
Nonetheless, the broken gate has raised issues, as engineers estimate that 60TMCFT of the saved water should be drained earlier than they’ll change the broken gate. The method, together with setting up a brand new gate, might take as much as 4 days or longer.
Districts downstream of the dam, together with these in AP, have been placed on excessive alert. Karnataka deputy CM DK Shivakumar visited the positioning to evaluate the state of affairs. “On Saturday evening, 40,000 cusecs of water was being launched into the Tungabhadra river by 10 crest gates. At 12.50am, the nineteenth gate malfunctioned, inflicting an enormous circulation of water into the river. We’ve taken each attainable precaution,” he stated.
Tungabhadra Board secretary ORK Reddy assured there was no speedy trigger for concern, noting that the dam’s design permits for the discharge of as much as 6.5 lakh cusecs of water directly, although the utmost launch recorded to this point was 3.6 lakh cusecs in Dec 1992.
AP govt positioned officers in Kurnool and Nandyal districts on alert. Kurnool metropolis is on the banks of the Tungabhadra. CM N Chandrababu Naidu directed senior officers from the water assets division to evaluate the state of affairs and dispatched a staff of senior engineers to help on the dam website.
Union minister HD Kumaraswamy emphasised the necessity for security upgrades to ageing constructions like Krishna Raja Sagar reservoir, suggesting the set up of gates just like these on the Narayanapura and Almatti dams.
