Dam safety experts begin study at Polavaram project

VIJAYAWADA: A team of international dam safety experts started their field visit at Polavaram project on Sunday. The team comprising four dam safety, structural and hydrological engineers has decided to stay back at the project site for four days to take up in-depth studies about diaphragm wall, coffer dam and other structures.
Engineers from Central Water Commission (CWC), Polavaram Project Authority (PPA), water resources department and the contractor agency, Meil, accompanied the team.The Centre has roped in David B Paul (US), Richard Donnelly (Canada), Gian Franco Di Cicco (US), Sean Hinchberger (Canada) to suggest the roadmap to complete the Polavaram project.
The Centre has decided to take the support of international experts after failing to get consensus views from the experts from IITs, CWC and other central agencies involved in the major dam constructions to ready the latest designs after the damage to the diaphragm wall.
The Centre has agreed to pay hefty honorarium to the experts as the completion of the project has become a herculean task.
The panel of experts inspected up stream coffer dam and studied the documents related to riverbed and execution LS of Jet grouting. They have also gone through the construction schedule of upstream coffer dam with photographs of sequence of execution. The team has also studied stability analysis conducted by ICCS in 2019 and seepage analysis report and another prepared by Delhi IIT professor Raju.
They took note of the Piezometre readings for the year 2022 and 2023 and summary of readings.