HYDERABAD/ADILABAD: The entire district administration of Nirmal was on tenterhooks between 2 am and 4 am Wednesday as fears peaked in those two dreadful hours that the Kadam project might be washed away. It was a sleepless night for most officials grappling with how to discharge the incoming flood water. Fortunately, a ‘natural solution’ averted what could otherwise have well been a ‘natural disaster.’The officials, at one point of time, mulled breaching the bund to save the project. Thankfully, the left side of the bund breached naturally easing pressure on the project.
However, Kadam is not safe yet.Heavy rain predicted in the next four days in the catchment area presents a clear and present danger.The tension during the intervening night between Tuesday-Wednesday began when two of the 18 gates of the project closed automatically with big logs striking them. It was a nerve-wracking early morning as the officials could not lift the gates immediately. “We thought the project would be washed away. But, the inflows decreased,” an official in the irrigation department told TNIE with a sigh of relief.Inflows into the Kadam project increased from two lakh cusecs on Tuesday eve ning to 5.09 lakh cusecs by midnight.
The designed discharge capacity of Kadam is just three lakh cusecs. Though the designed discharge of Kadam project is 700 ft, the water level touched 705 ft (free board level) after midnight. The top of the bund level (TBL) is 709 ft. The water did not submerge the project.The full storage capacity of Kadam is 7.6 tmcft and the present water storage is 7.6 tmcft. However, the inflows decreased to three lakh cusecs by Wednesday morning. The project was constructed on Kadem, a tributary of river Godavari near Kadam mandal in Nirmal district in 1958 to stabilise the local ayauct of around 70,000 acres. The project was originally designed and constructed during the Nizam’s rule by the then engineer Nawab Ali Nawaz Jung.
The project has 18 gates manufactured in Germany. Owing to unprecedented floods on August 31, 1958, Kadam project was breached.At that time, the officials increased the discharge capacity of the project from 1.3 lakh cusecs to three lakh cusecs and replaced nine Germany gates with Indian-made gates. Now, the project has 18 gates.The project also witnessed huge inflows of 3.2 lakh cusecs in 1995. Due to huge floods, the officials could not operate one gate in 2018. This is the fourth time that the project received floods than its designed capacity.
Spillway gates
Retired engineer M Shyam Prasad Reddy emphasises the need to increase the spillway gates of Kadam to enhance the discharge capacity to five lakh cusecs. He also suggests a tunnel be constructed to divert additional floodwater downstream, so that the project would not be damaged in future.However, a top official in the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) Wing of Irrigation department told Express that increasing the number of spillway gates is not possible.
As each gate costs around Rs 15 crore, replacing them all and other works requires a staggering Rs 300 crore. “If the height of the gates is increased, there will be a submergence problem,” the official pointed out.Sources opined construction of the proposed Kupti reservoir could mitigate the flood problem to Kadam in future. “If Kupti is constructed, it will arrest the water coming from Bazarhathnoor, Boath, Ichoda and Neradigonda areas and the inflows can be reduced to Kadam,” the official explained.