National Dam Safety Authority Grills Engineers on Kaleshwaram Project Barrages

The team of experts from the National Dam Safety Authority (NDA) is reported to have grilled engineers from the Central Design Organisation of the state irrigation department, and representatives of contracting companies that build the three Kaleshwaram project barrages at Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla, on Thursday 

The NDSA team, led by former Central Water Commission chairman J. Chandrashekar Iyer, is learnt to have asked detailed questions on the various design aspects of the barrages, and how the designs were arrived at, during the second day of the session.

The CDO engineers — who prepared the designs and engineering drawings for the barrages — responding to a question on whether they had taken any outside help for designing the dam, reportedly informed the NDSA team that they had not. To a question on whether they had visited the barrage sites before getting down to preparing the designs, the CDO engineers reportedly responded that they were not authorised to do so.

Though the CDO engineers may have informed the NDSA that they did not take outside help for designs, minutes a meeting that was chaired by the then chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao that was attended by representatives of the contracting companies, and irrigation department engineers in January 2019, make it clear that the then CM gave instructions



that the size of flood dissipation blocks may be increased as suggested by the company contracted to build the Medigadda barrage in order to speed up the works.

It may be recalled that investigations so far into the sinking of a portion of Medigadda barrage, and the repeated leaks from under the Annaram barrage foundations, have been attributed by the contracting companies to design shortfalls and defects. This was also the preliminary finding of the state government which had earlier said that design faults played a major role that led to the current state of the Kaleshwaram project barrages.

Afcons, which built the Annaram barrage, and L&T, which built the Medigadda barrage, had pointed out to how the designs, especially of structures dealing with flood waters, were discovered to be grossly inadequate resulting in them getting washed off in the floods, which in turn weakened the sand and soil under the foundation resulting in the sinking at Medigadda and the leaks at Annaram barrages. The NDSA team questioned the CDO engineers from morning till afternoon and in the second session, met with representatives of the three contracting companies that built the barrages, L&T, Afcons, and Navayuga. The second session with engineers from these companies went on till late into the night.