Kadem water released into Godavari

Minister Indrakaran Reddy officially opens one gate

Water gushing out of the gates of Kadem project in Nirmal district on Tuesday.

Heavy overnight rainfall in the catchment area spread over Adilabad district brought heavy inflows into the Kadem dam in Nirmal district necessitating release of flood water into Godavari just past noon on Tuesday. As much as 52,800 cusecs of water was released downstream by lifting six gates to a height of 10 ft.

Until 8 a.m., the catchment area of Kadem dam had received over 100 mm of rainfall on an average. The highest rainfall at 136 mm was recorded at Ichoda while Utnoor, Indervelli, Bazarhatnoor and Boath recorded rainfall over 100 mm.

Gates closed

The discharge continued till 2.30 p.m. when five of the six gates were closed and water gushed out only from gate number 6, the surplus discharge being 26,482 cusecs.

The level of water in the reservoir at 5 p.m. was 693.950 ft against a full reservoir level of 700 ft and the quantum of water was 6.118 tmcft against its capacity of 7 tmcft.

Heavy inflows into the dam started around 6 p.m. the previous evening when 13,911 cusecs of water flowed into the reservoir.

Heavy inflows

The heaviest of inflows of 23,889 cusecs was recorded at 9 p.m. the same night which further increased to 24,825 at 1 a.m. on Tuesday. The level of water and its quantum in the dam which was 686.2 ft and 4.542 tmcft at 6 p.m. on Monday respectively increased to 690.7 ft and 5.407 tmcft within 12 hours.

“We opened the gates once the level increased to 693.6 ft at noon. At that point of time the reservoir had 6.039 tmcft of water and the inflows were a huge 49,747 cusecs,” Assistant Executive Engineer T. Sreenath told The Hindu .

At around 5 p.m., gate number 9 was lifted by Forest Minister A. Indrakaran Reddy after performing puja to release more water into Godavari.

The Kadem waters are expected to reach Sripada Yellampalli Project located downstream sometime during the night.