This story is from July 4, 2019

Pre-monsoon repairs in May failed to fix faults in 15-year-old dam wall

Girish Mahajan, the water resources minister, has sought a detailed report from the irrigation officials regarding the breach in the Tivare dam in Ratnagiri district that caused a flash flood killing 14 persons.
Pre-monsoon repairs in May failed to fix faults in 15-year-old dam wall
Tivare dam
PUNE: Girish Mahajan, the water resources minister, has sought a detailed report from the irrigation officials regarding the breach in the Tivare dam in Ratnagiri district that caused a flash flood killing 14 persons.
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There are nine others still missing. While the search operations were suspended on Wednesday night, they are likely to resume on Thursday morning. The flash flood had hit seven villages downstream of the 0.08TMC dam.
People living downstream have alleged that there had been water leaks from the dam over the past two years, but nothing had been done to seriously address the problem in spite of complaints.
Pre-monsoon repair works were undertaken by the irrigation department in May, but they did not help much.
“The dam’s construction is fairly new — it was completed only in 2004. How did this dam cave in and cause a flood-like situation despite recent the repairs? This needs to be investigated,” the minister told TOI. He has now called for a detailed inquiry by the chief engineer of the irrigation department.
Sunil Kushire, the chief engineer of the water conservation department, said this is the first time ever that a minor dam has caused a flood-like situation in the state.

“The Tivare dam is among the 2,100 minor dam projects in Maharashtra and it was repaired by the irrigation department for leakages in May this year. As per the initial reports, about 100-150m of the dam’s earthen wall caved in following the incessant rain and the filling up of the dam. There was also a ‘conduit seizure’ due to the overfilling of the dam. The breach is likely to have taken place in the same area. We need to investigate the matter further,” he told TOI.
As per the report submitted, the Tivare dam reached it’s full capacity at 5pm on July 2. A big crack developed at around 8.30pm and the dam breached around 9.30pm.
About 100-150m length of the dam wall caved in leading to a flash flood that washed away 13 houses in the Bendwadi village.
The minister pointed out that the Tivare dam comes under the department of water conservation, which monitors the state’s 2,100 minor dams, each of which irrigates up to 600 hectares of land. This particular dam irrigates just about 174 hectares of agricultural land, mainly in the Chiplun taluka of Ratnagiri district. The construction of the Tivare dam commenced in 1997 and was completed in 2004 at a total cost of Rs 14.17 crore.
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