Know about Kol dam.

Gustakhi Maaf Haryana-Pawan Kumar Bansal.

By our enlightened reader R.N.Malik.Kaul Dam

Kol dam is a 167m high rockfill dam across river Satluj just 1.0 km upstream of the Slapper power house
You will be able to recall that water of river Beas was diverted through 28ft tunnel ( Beas-Satluj link) to Satluj river to enable the right power plant at Bhakra Dam to generate power during the dry period. The tunnel ends at Slapper at a point 1000ft above the river bed. The head has been utilised to generate 990 MW of power at Slapper. This power plant is 14 km upstream of Bilaspur along the old Chandigarh-Manali highway.
It is a run-off- the- river project designed to generate 800 MW. It was the first Hydropower project taken up by NTPC. The project took 11years to complete from 2004 to 2015. Total storage capacity is 0.576 bmc and active storage capacity is only 90mcm. The reservoir remains almost full round the year to create high head as much as possible.
The net indirect significant advantage of this dam is that it will retain the coarse silt and debris during the rainy season and release almost silt free water to the Bhakra reservoir thus increasing it’s life span by at least 50 years.

I happened to visit the site few times during the construction period. The colour of the rock material excavated from the river bed was very sparkling and beautiful. Unfortunately, it will never be available and visible again.