A bucket of concrete slowly descends from the 247-feet-high cable car even as an army of technicians checks welding on the block plates. There’s a buzz in the air as heavy equipment is shifted on the 100-m Sardar Sarovar dam. The ‘‘freeze frame’’ was broken after a one-line fax from authorities landed at the base camp here today, giving the on-ground engineers the go-ahead for raising the dam height from 100 metres to 110.64 metres in 120 days. Since then, work is on in full swing. The logistics were already in place, so were men. They were only waiting for the green signal. ‘‘We are all ready. In the last 24 hours, about 1,500 cubic meters of concrete has been cast in two blocks: No 31 and 33. Work is almost complete in block no 35,’’ says dam executive engineer Ashok V Gajjar. Associated with the project for 18 years now, Gajjar confesses to an emotional attachment: ‘‘I have seen the baby (dam) grow and now it’s time for it to repay in terms of electricity, irrigation and drinking water.’’ As soon as the news came in, a team of about 100 engineers, technicians and thousands of labour hands got down to work immediately. ‘‘The dam height has to be raised in about 100-120 days and we expect to do it. We will work round-the-clock to accomplish the task,’’ says Gajjar. In all, about 1.90 lakh cubic metre of concrete will be required to lift the dam height to the permitted 110.64 metres, that too before the onset of the monsoon. ‘‘We have been given targets like this even before. For us, this is like a one-day match where you have to bat first. Even when the dam height was to be taken from 95 to 100 metres, we were given a few months to finish the work,’’ says Gajjar. Once the dam height is raised, the power houses — one at the canal head and the other located underground — are expected to generate power. ‘‘In 1998, work on the canal head power house was completed and since then we’ve been waiting for the height to be raised so that power can be generated. This is the most exciting day in my life,’’ says superintending engineer, power house, J M Parmar. The canal head powerhouse is expected to generate 250 MW of power while the underground power station will generate 1,200 MW. ‘‘While the canal head powerhouse will start generation as soon as the height touches 110.64 metres, the first unit of the underground station will be commissioned in September this year and will generate 200 MW. Five more units of 200 MW capacity will be commissioned subsequently,’’ says Parmar. Excitement has been brewing up in Kevadia Colony, home to the technical staff associated with the project. ‘‘Saturday was a holiday for us but we stayed put, awaiting orders. When we got the message yesterday at 5 pm, jubilation broke out and within half an hour we were on the spot,’’ said a junior engineer supervising work at the site. The trawlers, which have not seen any frantic movement since July last year when the dam height reached 100 metres, are back in business and the dust raised by fast-moving trucks is a testimony to the pace with which the work has begun. ‘‘In the next few days, expect even more dust to be raised,’’ quips an engineer. Such is the urgency of raising the dam height that even the Managing director of SSSNL, S K Mahapatra, rushed to Kevadia today to take stock. ‘‘Each one here is hopeful of meetng the deadline,’’ said dam chief engineer P M Patel. For the record, Patel says raising the dam height will provide irrigation water to five lakh hectres of land in nine districts of the state, drinking water to 3,000 villages and facilitate interlinking of 13 rivers.
