Work on Pulichintala gate nears completion

GUNTUR/VIJAYAWADA : The stop-lock gate installation at the crest gate No 16 of Dr KL Rao Sagar Pulichintala Project on Krishna river is likely to be completed by Saturday late night. Already half of the 11 heavy iron plates of the stop-lock gate were installed by 5 pm Saturday.

Meanwhile, all the 17 gates of the project were closed and no outflow was there, as the storage in the project decreased to 5.4 tmc.

Pulichintala Project senior engineer Ramesh Babu said once the installation of the first segment, which was very crucial, was completed, installing the remaining segments of the stop-lock gate would continue in a stop-clock precession.

“At present, we are receiving 27,000 cusecs inflows from Nagarjuna Sagar Project and there is no outflow. If we could get 3 tmc of water from NSP, it would take just 10 days for the project to retain water at near FRL (Full Reservoir Level),” he said.

However, with decreasing inflows into Nagarjuna Sagar Project, with no rains in the upper catchment areas, it looks extremely hard for the Pulichintala Project to impound water at a considerable storage level. 

When the crest gate no 16 was washed away in the river two days ago, the storage level in the project was 44 tmc and to facilitate installation of the ‘Stop and Lock’ arrangement to arrest the leakage, high volumes of water was released downstream for two days.  

Meanwhile, the broken gate, which washed away, was found 750 meters away from the project.  Water Resources Engineer-in-Chief Narayana Reddy, who visited the project to take stock of the situation, said pre-work for the gate was done by Friday. A committee is looking into the breakage of the crest gate and based on the report, stern action will be initiated, he said.