Pulichintala crest gate washed away
A radial crest gate of the Pulichintala dam across Krishna river in Guntur district was washed away around 3.30 am on Thursday.
The incident occurred when water resources officials were trying to lift the gate to release water downstream from the reservoir. The dam has 24 gates.
The gate was washed away probably due to high water pressure, according to preliminary assessment. By that time, three to four gates were already lifted to some height.
The wide gap resulted in huge quantities of water gushing out of the dam.
Nearly 5.50 lakh cusecs of water is being released from Pulichi-ntala dam while inflow is about 2.5 lakh cusecs.
Water resources officials have called a team of experts from Bekem Infra Projects Private Limited as it is the same firm involved in erection of gates at Nagarjunasagar, Pulichintala and Polavaram project, to fix the gap, at least on a temporary basis.
Authorities maintain that they are discharging huge quantities of water to bring down the level in the reservoir in order to fix the problem. This may take a couple of days.
Water resources engineer-in-chief C. Narayana Reddy said, “We have ordered an inquiry to find out the reasons for the mishap.”
The multipurpose irrigation project, officially called K.L. Rao Sagar Pulichintala project, was built in 2013 at a cost of `1,850 crore, to store nearly 46 tmcft of water to meet drinking water, irrigation and hydel power needs of the undivided Andhra Pradesh.
AP water resources minister Dr P. Anil Kumar Yadav arrived at the dam and took stock of the situation. He said the government would not blame anyone until they receive a technical report on the incident. He suspected some weak spot in the gate movement could have caused the mishap. He said that collectors of Krishna and Guntur were asked to be prepared to handle discharge of six lakh sauces of water from the project. The huge amounts of water reaching Prakasam barrage forced the authorities to release water into the sea.
Authorities in both Guntur and Krishna districts sounded high flood alert along the downstream of the river course. Krishna district collector J. Nivas advised people not to cross streams and canals.