The Polavaram multipurpose irrigation project on Monday entered the Guinness Book of World Records by pouring 32,000 cubic metres of concrete in 24 hours during the work of dam construction, according to Guinness officials present to record the feat. The work began at 8 am on January 6 and concluded at 8 AM on January 7.
Work on the project is being undertaken by the Navayuga Engineering Co Ltd, and aims to make the dam ready for irrigation by June. "Concreting for a project of this size normally takes around three years, but at this pace and passion, the dam will be completed by June," Navayuga MD Chinta Sridhar told reporters.
The project was taken over by Navayuga after the earlier contractor failed to deliver on timelines. The record was previously held by Abdul Wahed Bin Shabib, RALS Contracting LLC and Alfa Eng. Consultant in Dubai, where they had poured 21,580 cubic meters of concrete in a span of two days.
Andhra Pradesh's Information and Public Relations Commissioner, Venkateshwarlu, told TNM that Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu will visit the site and receive the prize from representatives of Guinness World Records. The entire feat was monitored by representatives of Guinness World Records through drone cameras.
Sharing the news, Naidu tweeted:
The lifeline of Andhra Pradesh, Polavaram project has entered the Guinness World Records today for pouring 32,100 cubic meters of concrete non-stop in 24 hours. Concrete work to make the spillway had begun at 8 a.m. on Sunday and concluded at 8 a.m. this morning.
— N Chandrababu Naidu (@ncbn) January 7, 2019
The project recently bagged the Central Board of Irrigation and Power (CBIP) award for speedy execution.
Designed to withstand massive floods, the Polavaram spillway is set to have one of the highest discharge capacities in the world at 50 lakh cusecs. The total storage capacity of the water reservoir is 120,000 million cubic feet (TMC). The multipurpose project is expected to generate 960 MW of power by end of 2020, Sridhar added.
The project is being constructed on the Godavari River, and is spread across Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. The project will lift water from the Godavari River near Tadipudi village in West Godavari District and pump it through the Main Canal into the 20 TMC capacity Jalleru reservoir, and then supply water to West Godavari and Krishna Districts.
A total of 17,800 acres of land – 6,600 acres of forestland and 11,200 acres of revenue land – spread across 127 villages in four constituencies of West Godavari district – Polavaram, Chintalapudi, Gopalavaram and Denduluru – is being acquired for the project.
All neighbouring states of Andhra have opposed it in some form or the other, with Odisha being the biggest critic of the project.
With IANS inputs