The Pazhassi Dam also called Kulur Barrage is a stone masonry diversion structure in

Kannur district Kannur () is one of the 14 Districts of Kerala, districts along the west coast in the state of Kerala, India. The city of Kannur is the district headquarters and gives the district its name. The old name, Cannanore, is the anglicized form of th ...

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

, India. It is named after king

Pazhassi Raja Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja () (3 January 1753 – 30 November 1805), also known as Cotiote Rajah and Pychy Rajah, was the '' de facto'' head of the Kottayam Kingdom in the Malabar region of Kerala between 1774 and 1805. His struggles with the ...

, a patriot who died a heroic death in the war. The dam is constructed across the west flowing Bavali river near Veliyambra. It was commissioned by Prime Minister

Morarji Desai Morarji Ranchhodji Desai (29 February 1896 – 10 April 1995) was an Indian politician and Indian independence activist, independence activist who served as the Prime Minister of India, prime minister of India between 1977 and 1979 leading th ...

in 1979. It mainly functions as an irrigation dam, serving a command area of in

Iritty Iritty is a municipality and taluk in Kannur district of Kerala state, India. The town is the main market place for the farmer communities in the surrounding regions. Iritty is at a distance of from Kannur International Airport and one among ...

taluk of the

Kannur Kannur (), formerly known in English as Cannanore, is a city and Municipal corporation (India), municipal corporation in the state of Kerala, India. It is the administrative headquarters of the Kannur district and situated north of the maj ...

District. The water from this dam also meets the drinking water requirement of Kannur district. The dam site and the reservoir are known for their scenery.

Topography

The dam is built at Kuyiloor across the Bavali River, in the basin of the West flowing rivers from Tadri to Kanyakumari. It rises in the

Coorg Kodagu district () (also known by its former name Coorg) is an administrative district in the Karnataka state of India. Before 1956, it was an administratively separate Coorg State at which point it was merged into an enlarged Mysore State ...

(in

Karnataka Karnataka ( ) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed as Mysore State on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, States Re ...

) at and drains a catchment area of . The mean annual rainfall in the catchment is . The nearest towns to the dam site are

Mattanur Mattanur, also spelled as Mattannur, is a municipality and an aerotropolis in Kannur district, Kerala, India. Mattanur is about 27 km east of Kannur and Thalassery, two major towns of the district. Mattanur lies between Kannur, Th ...

and

Features

The diversion dam or barrage, built with stone masonry to function as a major irrigation project, is in height and has a length of . At the Full Reservoir Level of , with a water spread area of , the dam has a gross storage capacity of . The spillway designed to rout a design flood discharge of per second is fitted with 16 radial gates over a length of . While the dam was completed in 1978, its irrigation component was completed in 1979. The water stored in the reservoir is diverted for irrigation through a control structure on the left bank of the barrage to the main canal of length, designed to carry a discharge of per second. The gross command area under the canal system is with a net command area of (as against the earlier planned figure of ) to mainly raise three crops of paddy every year in the

and Taliparamba taluks of Kannur district; other crops grown in the command are coconut, arecanut, cashew nut, tapioca, pepper, ginger, turmeric and vegetables. The network of canals includes six branch canals of total length and 32 distributaries of total length. The entire command is covered under the Command Area Development Programme (CADP) of the Ministry of Water Resources, Government of India and is being monitored since 2003.

Failure of gates

On 7 August 2012, some of the gates of the barrage failed to open, causing the flood waters to overflow the barrage for 20 hours. There was no damage to life or the dam structure, but minor property and crop loss occurred. The gates were repaired at a cost of Rs 70 million.

Pazhassi Dam Gardens

File:Pazhassi Dam - Dam, garden and reservoir15.jpg File:Pazhassi Dam - Dam, garden and reservoir18.jpg File:Pazhassi Dam - Dam, garden and reservoir9.jpg

References

External links