Kanva Dam

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Kanva Dam is a minor irrigation project dam. Built in 1946 across the Kanva River, it is 15 km long covering 776 hectares. The Kanva River (a tributary of the Shimsha River and Cauvery River) is named after the sage Kanva, who is believed to have lived in the caves in the mountains and forests around the dam in the time of Ramayana.

This is one of the very unique & very rare dam in india because of the use of siphon technology as against conventional dam which uses gates. Its unbelieveable that this dam has no gates at all but still it never poses any threat to dam during heavy rains where the dam water level rises rapidly above safe level because of the use of siphon spillway. A siphon spillway in a dam uses the siphon effect to increase the flow rate. A normal spillway flow is pressurized by the height of the reservoir above the spillway whereas a siphon flow rate is governed by the difference in height of the inlet and outlet.