The uncertainty over the construction of an additional spillway in the Hirakud reservoir has been resolved.
A delegation comprising members from the World Bank, Central Water Commission (CWC), and the State Dam Safety Department inspected the Hirakud reservoir to finalize the project. The construction is planned to commence in the current financial year and be completed by the financial year 2030-31.
The nine-member delegation visited various areas, including the additional spillway site, the fast gap of the upcoming Hirakud city, the rerolling mill area, the cable colony, Premnagar, Gandhinagar, Laxminagar, Gujatal, and the syphon area, before holding a review meeting at Ashok Nivas.
The project has a budget allocation of Rs. 90 crore for the financial year 2025-26, Rs. 200 crore for 2026-27, Rs. 224 crore for 2027-28, Rs. 170 crore for 2028-29, Rs. 110 crore for 2029-30, and Rs. 90.38 crore for 2030-31. Additionally, Rs. 32 crore will be spent on identifying and restoring cracks and other critical conditions through water, land, and air surveys. Another Rs. 150 crore has been allocated for automating the proposed spillways and gates of the Hirakud Dam.
The additional spillway, approximately 91 meters long, aims to increase the floodwater discharge capacity and will feature five sluice gates. The spillway channel will be 2 km long and 300 meters wide. The Central Water Commission and the state government jointly estimated the probable maximum flood (PMF) of the Mahanadi in 1997, and the Hirakud reservoir was designed to hold a total of 24.5 lakh cusecs of floodwater.
Under the current system, a maximum of 1.5 million cusecs of floodwater can be discharged from the Hirakud reservoir at a time. The construction of multiple barrages on the upper reaches of the Mahanadi by the Chhattisgarh government has increased the risk to the Hirakud reservoir. In response, the state government, in collaboration with the Central Water Commission and the World Bank, has taken steps to construct additional spillways.
An agreement was signed with Tata Infra Projects Limited in 2018, but the company withdrew from the project in 2020 after completing only Rs. 12 crore of work due to delays in the land transfer process. As a result, the project’s initial cost estimate of Rs. 369.53 crore has now more than doubled.
