Floods damage Kaleshwaram pumping stations in Telangana
The incessant rains from past few days in the catchment areas of the Godavari river and subsequent floods continue to wreak havoc with Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project in Telangana — one of the largest lift irrigation schemes in the world — inundating two of its huge pumping stations and partially damaging another on Thursday.
Advisor to the Telangana government on lift irrigation schemes K Penta Reddy on Friday said it was “once in 100 years flooding in Godavari river.”
“The present flood of 28.46 lakh cusecs (as on Thursday) is the highest since August 19, 1986 which was 28.18 lakh cusecs. Before that the last highest recorded flood was recorded at 30.03 lakh cusecs on August 19, 1953,” an irrigation official said.
According to irrigation department officials, the Kannepalli pump house at Medigadda village of Mahadevpur block in Jayashankar Bhupalpally district was completely flooded by Thursday evening. The pump house comprising 17 giant motor pumps — popularly referred to as “Baahubali motors” — has the capacity to lift three thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) of water every day. Each motor pump weighs 2,376 metric tonnes and has 139 megawatts capacity.
Similarly, another mega pump house at Annaram in the upstream of Godavari near Peddapalli district, was also completely flooded. This pump house comprises 12 such gigantic pump houses.
The third major pump house under the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation scheme (KLIS) at Sundilla in Peddapalli also suffered partial damage, but the irrigation engineers have ensured that the water did not enter the pumps. “But at Medigadda and Annaram, the pump houses are submerged at least 10 metre deep and it will be a gigantic task to drain out the water,” said a senior irrigation engineer working on the Medigadda site, on the condition of anonymity.
Penta Reddy, however, clarified in a statement that there was no need to any panic over the flooding of pump houses and expressed confidence that the they can be restored within a short time once the flood water recedes.
“The loss definitely runs into several hundred crores. The cost of the motor pumps itself would be around ₹1500 crore. We are not sure to what extent the pumps are damaged. The electric panels, pipes and other equipment also appear to have suffered huge loss,” the irrigation engineer quoted above said.
Due to incessant rains in the catchment areas of Godavari and its tributaries, the water level at Lakshmi barrage at Medigadda and Saraswati barrage at Annaram has been rising steadily for the last four to five days.
“The spillway of the Lakshmi barrage has a discharge capacity of 28.23 lakh cusecs of water, but in the last two days, it received 28.46 lakh cusecs. We lifted all the 85 flood gates to discharge the water yet it was overflowing. It put the pressure on the backwaters, resulting in the water entering the pump houses,” the engineer explained. Similarly, at Saraswathi barrage, the inflow was about 15,95,228 cusecs which was released downstream by lifting all the 60 floodgates. Yet, it could not withstand the increasing inflow; resulting in the submergence of Annaram pump house, he said.