Nagarjuna Sagar Dam
The Nagarjuna Sagar Dam is a large dam in India. It is located between the cities Gunturu and Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh on Krishna, on the border of the districts Gunturu and Nalgonda. It was one of the first modern water power projects in India. The Nagarjuna dam was completed in 1969, is 124 m high, 1 km long and has 26 locks on the crown. It will be the largest built of masonry dam in the world.
Reservoir
The reservoir is with its memory space of around 11,500 million of the largest in India, but around the world - both for storage space as well as on the water surface - not among the largest 100 vary for the storage space available data from 11,315 through 11,472 and 11500-11561 million cubic meters.
Lately, the inflows have diminished to the reservoir because there are now above an increasing number of other projects.
Prehistory
The river Krishna is one of the longest rivers of India and rises in Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra, passes through Sangli and flows Hamasaladeevi in Andhra Pradesh in the Bay of Bengal. The state of Andhra Pradesh could not effectively use the river to the middle of the 20th century, because there was no reservoir to store the water. On the one hand devastated flood the villages in the district of Krishna, while on the other hand, the district Nalgonda and Gunturu could not use the excess water.
The project to build a dam to use the excess water of the river, was driven by the British rulers in 1903. Siddeswaram and Pulichintala were found as potential sites for a reservoir, but none of these proposals has been realized.
Based on the report of the Khosla Committee of 1952, the government decided, under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, to build as part of the first Indian five-year plan in drylands reservoirs. The state governments were asked to indicate the possible locations for such projects. After Andhra Pradhesh was founded in 1953 and his government had made such a statement, the foundation stone for the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam was laid on 10 December 1955. It was named after the Buddhist monk Nagarjuna.
Construction work
Construction began in February 1956, but due to lack of funds, there was no modern equipment. The dam was therefore built of masonry instead of concrete. In Macherla a cement factory for the construction project was built. Also a railway line between the site and the cement factory was built. The stones came from the nearby Sunkesula quarries, sand from the rivers Rayavaram and Halia. The Buddhist monuments and other historical artifacts in the area were treated or kept in Nagarjuna Konda Museum. In 1967, the dam of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was inaugurated. The construction of the dam was completed in 1969. Fully usable was the dam in 1972, after the crown caps were fitted. Total expenses including maintenance until 2005 was 1300 crore (13 million) rupees. The number of construction workers involved in the project varied 45000-70000. Approximately 174 people died in accidents during construction killed. 52 villages disappeared in the water and 24,000 people were displaced. The resettlement lasted until 1967.
Benefits of the project
The dam supplies the districts of Nalgonda, Prakasam, Khammam, Krishna and Gunturu with irrigation water. Two channels - left and right - were built to drain the water from the reservoir to supply. The right channel ( Jawahar canal ) is 203 km long and irrigates 4500 km ² of land. The left channel ( Lalbahadur - Shastri - channel) is 295 km long and irrigates 4200 km ².
Hydropower
The hydroelectric plant has a power generation capacity of 815.6 MW. On the right channel a power plant with 90 MW and will be added on the left channel of a 60 MW. ( to Andhra Pradesh Hydel Power Plants)
More info
( according to Nagarjuna Sagar Project Profiles letter )
- Masonry dam: überströmbare length of the dam = width of the spillway: 471 m
- Not überströmbare length of dam: 979 m
- Total length of dam: 1450 m
- Maximum height of dam: 125 m ( The wall height is according to different specifications 124 or 125 meters)
- Total length of the embankment: 3414 m
- Maximum height of the embankment: 26 m
Total construction length: 4864 m