VIJAYAWADA: The three-day visit of a team of foreign experts to the Polavaram Project concluded on Wednesday. On Thursday, the experts will hold a meeting in Rajahmundry with Polavaram Project Authority Chief Engineer M Ramesh Kumar. On Friday, they will meet the Authority’s CEO in New Delhi.
The foreign experts, Sean Hinchberger, David B Paul, and Gianfranco De Cicco, along with officials from the Central Water Resources Department, including Sarabjit Singh Bakshi, Manish Rathore, Gaurav Tiwari, and Hemant Gautam, and officials from CSMRS, namely Manish Gupta and Ravi Agarwal, were present.
They were joined by Polavaram Project Authority Member Secretary M Raghuram, Director K Shankar, Chief Engineer M Ramesh Kumar, and NIRM Director Ajay Kumar Naitanil.
Over the three days, the team conducted extensive field-level inspections for about nine hours, covering Gap-1, D-Hill, Gap-2, G-Hill, the upstream and downstream portions of the main dam, D-wall, de-watering channel, rockfill and clay stockpiles, and the soil conditions at Main Dam Gap-1.
On the final day, during the field inspection at Gap-1, the team examined the area that had been compacted as per the suggestions given on the second day. The compacted soil was removed to assess its stability after compaction. At the conclusion of the three-day visit, the foreign experts and central government officials felicitated AP State Water Resources Advisor M Venkateswara Rao, in the presence of ENC K Narasimhamurthy.