Four crest gates of Kadem project stuck, villages in command area under fear as inflows cross 3.85 lakh cusecs

HYDERABAD: With four crest gates out of the 18 at the Kadem project in Nirmal district of Telangana refusing to open, heavy inflows into the project with no way to escape have submerged the low laying areas around the project. Irrigation officials who were inspecting the project gates made a quick escape on Thursday morning as the flood water started overflowing the project crest gates.

While the inflows were 3.8 lakh cusecs, only 2.42 lakh cusecs of water was released downstream, inundating several villages on the bank of the project. District authorities under the supervision of Minister A Indrakaran Reddy speeded up the process of evacuating 7,000 people from 12 villages to safe places.

Meanwhile the Irrigation officials monitoring the situation from Hyderabad said that the water levels at Kadem would recede to safer levels within two to three hours. They estimated that the inflows would considerably come down and the water levels at the project were just 2 feet above the maximum level of 700 feet.

As result of outflows from Kadem and rains in catchment areas Yellampally project was receiving 1.21 lakh cusecs of water. At Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP) two spillway gates were opened and a total of 8,318 cusecs was released down the stream. While the inflows were 48,000 cusecs, the outflows were 55,715 cusecs. At Sir Arthur Cotton Dowleswaram barrage in Andhra Pradesh a first warning was issued with the surplus at the project reaching 10,55,223 cusecs.

At the Polavaram project, a massive flood water of 11 lakh cusecs accumulated forcing the project authorities to release 11,03,271 cusecs by lifting 48 gates of the spillway.

In the Krishna basin too major projects received heavy inflows from Almatti and Narayanpur in Karnataka. Srisailam received 52,856 cusecs from Priyadarshini Jurala and 117 cusecs from Handri Neeva. The present water level in Srisailam was 816.20 feet and the reservoir was holding 38.1234 TMC of water. At Prakasam barrage in Vijayawada 74, 000 cusecs of water was released into the Bay of Bengal by partially lifting 70 gates.