Hirakud dam in Odisha opens 20 more gates

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Burla (Sambalpur), Aug 1:

The Hirakud dam authorities in Odisha’s Sambalpur district today opened 20 more sluice gates to release second phase floodwater of Mahanadi river.

While the first gate was opened at 9 AM, 19 more gates were opened by evening today, dam officials said.

With four gates that had remained opened earlier, the total gates opened by the dam are now 24.

Talking to the media, chief engineer, Hirakud Dam Biswajit Mohanty said the decision to open 20 more gates had been taken to release excess floodwater due to heavy rainfall in the upper catchments of the river and to bring down the water level of the dam from the present 623.15 feet to 615 feet.

Stating that nearly 3.6 lakh cusecs of water are being released through these 24 gates, he said the excess water would not pose any flood threat downstream of Mahanadi.

“Since floodwater of Tel river has subsided, the inflow of water at present is around 3.5 lakh cusecs at Mundali barrage. The floodwater released from the dam today will take 12 hours to reach Khairamal and 48 hours to reach Mundali. Considering this, the gross inflow of water from the Mundali would be a little over 7 lakh cusecs of water by Sunday. This would not pose any flood threat in the lower reaches,” Mohanty said.