The giant £2.4bn mega-dam that is so powerful it can change the weather | World | News
The ambitious plans to build a £2.4 billion multi-purpose dam in India‘s Andhra Pradesh state have been in the works since the 1940s.
The huge piece of infrastructure, which would stretch 3.5-kilometres (around 2 miles) over the Godavari river, has been designed to tackle a number of issues experienced by the state’s 50 million-strong population.
Andhra Pradesh’s sprawling southeastern regions experience a unique combination of drought and flooding problems – with more than a dozen losing their lives following heavy downpowers last August, while other areas struggle to tend their crops and find drinking water amid sparse year-on-year rainfall.
The Polavaram Dam was arrived upon during the Second World War, when India was still part of the British Empire, as an ambitious solution to the problem – transferring water between flooded and deprived areas, in line with demand.
Nearly a century later, a 1,000-metre-long spillway has been built – the biggest of its kind in the world, with a higher discharge capacity than the Three Gorges Dam in China. The finish line is now in reach – but it hasn’t been a smooth road to get to this point.
Despite the vital purpose the dam is expected to fill – and its growing necessity amid increasingly extreme weather around the globe – it has met with several hurdles since its initial proposal.
Changes in government have slowed down progress, as well as developmental issues including disgruntled neighbours – a problem all too common to the UK’s own planning system. The contractor behind the project has also changed twice, with Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Ltd now at the helm – and it’s full steam ahead for a grand opening before the end of the decade.
The spillway, made up of concrete and cement concrete blocks, towers over 50-metres-high, with 48 hydraulic gates – if nothing else, a striking visual symbol of the project’s immense ambition.
Construction has not yet begun on the dam itself, which will provide controlled irrigation to around 720,000 acres of land alongside acting as a flood defence, or the site’s hydroplant, which is set to generate power from the huge amounts of water being redirected by the new barrier.
Taking the seemingly uncontrollable forces of nature into human hands is especially important for the coastal Indian region, which also has a thriving agricultural sector, shipping rice and tobacco around the world.
Hopes are high that the dam, which will be built from a combination of rock and compacted earth, could protect the region – and its thirsty people – from the whims of the tropical monsoon climate.
Chief Minister for the state, N. Chandrababu Naidu told colleagues that the project needed completion by December 2027 in a meeting this week, as per The Hindu.
Water Resources Minister Rama Naidu told journalists last year that “there should not be any deviation” from the planned timeline, stressing that “not even one hour” should be spared.
