The Dowleswaram Barrage was an irrigation structure originally built in 1852 by

Sir Arthur Cotton General Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton (15 May 1803 – 24 July 1899) was a British army officer and irrigation engineer who worked in the Madras Presidency. Cotton devoted his life to the construction of irrigation and navigation canals throughout ...

on the lower stretch of the

Godavari River The Godavari (, Help:IPA/Sanskrit, �od̪aːʋəɾiː is India's second longest river after the Ganges River, Ganga River and drains the third largest Drainage basin, basin in India, covering about 10% of India's total geographical area. It ...

before it empties into the

Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean. Geographically it is positioned between the Indian subcontinent and the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese peninsula, located below the Bengal region. Many South Asian and Southe ...

. Retrofitting was done in 1970, and it was officially renamed as Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage, also known as Dowleswaram Barrage.

Geography

The Godavari River empties its water into the Bay of Bengal after flowing nearly fifty miles from the Dhavaleshwaram Barrage.

Rajamahendravaram Rajahmundry ( ), officially Rajamahendravaram, is a city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and district headquarters of East Godavari district. It is the fifth most populated city in the state. During British rule, the district of Rajahmu ...

is a city situated on the left bank of Godavari River. Upstream, where the river is divided into two streams; the Gautami to the left and the Vasistha to the right, forms the joining line between the West Godavari and the East Godavari districts. The dam alignment crosses two mid stream islands.

Original Dowleswaram Barrage

The original Dowleswaram Barrage (also spelled ''Dowlaisweram'' or ''Dowlaiswaram'') was built by a British irrigation engineer, Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton and completed in 1850. The barrage was constructed in four sections, which allowed flood passage during the construction period. The Dowleswaram Barrage was 15 feet high and 3.5 km long. Cotton's many projects averted famines and stimulated the economy of southern India. Before this barrage was constructed many hectares of land has been flooded with water and was unused. The water would be worthlessly going into sea. But when Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton had built the barrage those unused lands were brought into cultivation and the water was stored and used. The Cotton Museum was constructed on behalf of Cotton's memory. It is a tourist attraction in Rajamahendravaram.

Modern Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage / Godavari Barrage

Between 1970 and 1982, the barrage was reconstructed to a height of . The reservoir at present has a gross storage capacity of and a dead storage of at . The Barrage consists of 4 arms with 175 bays having a length of . The reservoir benefits 65

mandal A tehsil (, also known as tahsil, taluk, or taluka () is a local unit of administrative division in India and Pakistan. It is a subdistrict of the area within a district including the designated populated place that serves as its administrative c ...

s of

East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...

and

West Godavari The West Godavari district is a coastal district in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh with an administrative headquarters in Bhimavaram. As of the 2011 Census of India, the district has an area of and a population of 1,779,935. It is bounded ...

with 2 crops annually supplying water utilisation of nearly .

Inadequate water inflows

During the rabi season of 2022–23, adequate water is not supplied to the canals due to a lack of sufficient water inflows into the reservoir as sufficient water had not been stored earlier in the upstream Polavaram reservoir. The natural flows normally available during the dry season in the Godavari River are being stored in Medigadda and Sammakka Sagar reservoirs which used to be available for use in Godavari Delta. To build up the water level/storage in the Polavaram reservoir to enable adequate water release downstream, water is released from the Donkarayi reservoir directly without using it for power generation in the lower Sileru power station. At least 60

tmcft Tmcft, (Tmc ft), (TMC), (tmc) is the abbreviation of thousand million cubic feet (1,000,000,000 = 109 = 1 billion), commonly used in India in reference to volume of water in a reservoir or river A river is a natural stream of fresh wa ...

water storage is needed in the Polavaram reservoir or up to the safe level limit of the upper coffer dam of the Polavaram Project to supply water to the total cropped area during the rabi season.

References

External links