Bid to reduce water pressure; Sluice gates planned to take load off dykes

Guwahati: The State Government has decided to install sluice gates in embankments across the State as it has been identified that breaches of brittle embankments exacerbated the flood havoc this year.

According to official sources, so far this year embankments of the rivers Brahmaputra, Barak and their tributaries have been breached at 69 places.

The sources said that the idea behind introducing sluice gates in embankments is to reduce the pressure of flood water on the embankments through judicious and controlled release of flood water through sluice gates.

The Government plans to install the sluice gates in areas without human population, such as wetlands etc, in order to avoid damage to houses, livestock and crops, the sources added. A survey will be carried out in this regard once the flood situation abates.

It is pertinent to note that in January this year, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had announced a plan to construct concrete embankments of around 1,000 km in length at an estimated cost of about Rs 1,500 crore.

The total length of embankments in the State is around 4,474 km, comprising of 423 embankments. Out of these, 295 embankments - around 70 per cent of the total number - completed their life span long ago. For instance, the 45 embankments under the Sivasagar Water Resources Division were all constructed between 1942 and 1991. Similarly, there are 28 embankments under the Lakhimpur Division which were constructed between 1956 and 1969. On the other hand, there are 38 embankments under the Dibrugarh Division which were constructed between 1953 and 1991.

Satellite images collected by the State Government have revealed that the river Brahmaputra eroded an area of 798 sq km, while creating fresh farmland of 208 sq km via silt deposits, between 1988 and 2015.

The official sources further said that water cascading down from Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Nagaland play a major role in aggravating the flood crisis in the State, along with weakening the embankments.

Also read: Complete compensation by August 15: CM Himanta Biswa Sarma

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