Water level of Saradar Sarovar dam in Gujarat nears old overflow mark, live storage crosses 25% mark

Vadodara/Gandhinagar:

The water level of Sardar Sarovar Narmada Dam reservoir, the lifeline of Gujarat’s water supply, has reached 121.46 meter by 12pm today which is quite close to the old overflow mark of 121.92 meter but quite below the new maximum height of 138.48meter.

It has seen a rise of over 10 meters in last around 2 weeks and is still rising to the pleasure of Guajrat where apart from irrigation around half of its population (3 crore) depends on it for drinking and household needs.

The water level is still rising due to rain in the catchment area of river Narmada in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and increased inflow. However a senior official of the SSNNL said that the gates of the dam won’t be open below 130meter.

According to the Narmada project’s control room in Vadodara, the water level which had started rising from 5am of August 17 when it was 111.08 meters has reached 121.46m at 12pm today afternoon. The inflow was 22911 cuses while the outflow was only 4990cuses. So the water level was rising. Notably the new overflow height of the dam reservoir situated in Kevadiya in Narmada district in Central Guajrat has been raised from 121.92 to 138.48 after the installation and closure of 30 sluice gates last year.
The minimum level for functioning of the river bed as well as canal bed hydel units is 110.64 meters below which the storage in the reservoir becomes dead.
Today at 12 pm the live storage was 1482.50 million cubic meters (MCM) which against total live capacity of 5845.87MCM was over 25% of it. The storage on August 18 at 1pm was only 341.66 MCM. In the last 3 days it has seen a rise of over 300MCM despite release of water to Dholi Dwaja dam in Surendranagar and other routine purposes.

However despite rise in level, for appropriate water storage the river-bed hydoro electric unit has not been started and only one of the five units of canal bed hydel unit was on. The dam’s main power plant ie river bed one houses six 200 MW Francis pump-turbines to generate electricity and include a pumped-storage capability. Additionally, a power plant on the intake for the main canal ie canal bed contains five 50 MW Kaplan turbine-generators. The total installed capacity of the power facilities is 1,450 MW.

DeshGujarat