The Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Limited (SSNNL) has opened 15 radial gates of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Gujarat after significant rain in the Narmada Basin’s catchment districts in Madhya Pradesh. This step was made because water kept flowing from the Indirasagar and Omkareshwar dams upstream. As a result, officials in three Gujarat districts put 30 villages on high alert.
Starting about 8 PM on Thursday, the dam’s spillway released 4.45 lakh cusecs of water. The districts of Narmada, Vadodara, and Bharuch, which are all downstream, have been told to take the required steps to “avoid any incident in the downstream” areas.
As of Thursday, the water level at the Sardar Sarovar Dam was 135.58 meters. This was a rise of 10 cm overnight and an inflow of more than 4.5 lakh cusecs. The dam is presently only approximately three meters away from its full reservoir level (FRL) of 138.68 meters. It is 89.75% filled right now, with a total storage capacity of 8,490 million cubic meters (MCM) and a live storage capacity of 4,790 MCM.
The dam’s river bed power house (RBPH) is also fully operational, discharging another 45,000 cusecs of water downstream in addition to the spillway gates. The RBPH is an underground powerhouse that is about 165 meters downstream from the dam. It contains six reversible turbines that can produce a total of 1,200 MW. The canal head powerhouse (CHPH), which has a total installed capacity of 250 MW, is also running and adding to the overall amount of water released.
The Flood Control Cell took the choice to open the gates on Thursday morning to handle the large amount of water coming in and stop flooding from happening in low-lying areas.