SLUICE-GATES OF SORROW

As the Southwest monsoon lashed through most of July, flash floods caused by the waters of the Godavari river hit the temple town of Bhadrachalam and surrounding areas in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. It reignited an old row about water management between the states.

- Amarnath K. Menon

At its centre is the under-construction Polavaram dam project 73 km downstream of Bhadrachalam on the Godavari in Andhra. Telangana alleges that an unauthorised raising of the dam is the root cause of widespread flooding in upstream areas and demands an immediate reduction. The on-site cofferdam—a watertight enclosure underwater to help construction, built to a height of 41.5 metres—has captured large volumes of water, leading to its backwaters submerging upstream habitations up to Bhadrachalam. On July 30, Telangana wrote to the Polavaram Project Authority, asking it to get the impact of the project’s backwaters on Bhadrachalam and surrounding areas, including the heavy water plant of the Department of Atomic Energy at Manuguru, studied by an independent agency. “The backwater impact on Bhadrachalam will be a common phenomenon once the Polavaram project is completed and water is stored at full reservoir level,” the letter cautioned.