Sambalpur: In deference to an order issued by the Mahanadi Water Dispute Tribunal (MWDT) over sharing of the river water between Odisha and Chhattisgarh, a hydrographic survey on the status of the Mahanadi riverbed has commenced recently. A Mumbai-based agency is carrying out the survey.
According to sources, the survey report will be submitted to the MWDT by March 2022. The agency is collecting detailed data regarding the depth, width, length and water retention capacity of Mahanadi.
Chief engineer of Hirakud dam Ananda Sahu said following the order of the tribunal, the present status of the river and change in its course is being surveyed. “Two teams of the agency are at work. A report is being prepared on the above-said aspects of the area within 1-km radius in Mahanadi upstream and about 50-km radius in the downstream. A detailed report will be submitted to the Union Water Resources department and the state government. Water management of the river will be easy in future,” he added.
Notably, water flow in the downstream was affected after Chhattisgarh government built barrages in the upstream of Mahanadi. This has become a bone of contention between the two states. The issue is now sub judice in the MWDT.
Earlier, several surveys have also been conducted by agencies of the country and abroad on the status Mahanadi and the Hirakud reservoir.
The last survey on the river and the reservoir was conducted by a Hyderabad-based company in 2015.
In the survey, it was stated that average alluvial deposit in the reservoir was 27 per cent while dead storage was measured at 53 per cent and live storage at 17 per cent.
In 1997, the Central Water Commission (CWC) and the state government had jointly carried out ‘probable maximum floods’ (PMF) survey and got some crucial findings. It pointed out that the reservoir was to receive 24.50 cusec floodwater. In view of this assessment, work of an additional spillway for Hirakud reservoir has been undertaken with assistance from the World Bank.