Sudden drop in inflows into Sriram Sagar Project disappoints officials

HYDERABAD: The inflows into the Sriram Sagar Project (SRSP), which had been copious in the past few days, suddenly dropped on Wednesday due to flash floods receding in Maharashtra.
The inflows into SRSP on Tuesday were 2.6 lakh cusecs. “The inflows were 1.5 lakh cusecs on Wednesday morning. The inflows further dropped to 87,000 cusecs in the afternoon. They dipped to 34,850 cusecs at 8 pm and further fell to 18,240 cusecs at 9 pm,” SRSP chief engineer D Sankar told Express.

The officials were initially hopeful that the SRSP would be filled up in next two to three days. However, Maharashtra closed all the minor irrigation projects and check dams in their state after the rains stopped. If the SRSP had been filled, the officials had planned to release water to 5 lakh acres under Lower Manair Dam (LMD).  “The capacity of LMD is 24 tmc and it needs to be filled twice to give water to 5 lakh acres. Besides, we had also planned to keep some water in SRSP for Rabi season. But the inflows decreased suddenly,” an official said. 

The irrigation officials released water to four lakh acres under Kakatiya main canal of Sriram Sagar Project (SRSP) on Wednesday. The officials will release water to Nagarjuna Sagar Project (NSP) left canal farmers on Thursday for irrigating 6.25 lakh acres.

“We have released 6,000 cusecs water on Wednesday. We are also planning to release water to Saraswathi and Lakshmi canals too, if there is a need,” D Sankar said. Nagarjuna Sagar Project chief engineer S Sunil told Express that the water would be released for Zone-1 and Zone-2 crops under NSP left canal from Thursday. “Around 40 tmc water will be released in a phased manner till November 28,” he said. The inflows into NSP were good on Wednesday and it is expected to get inflows at the same pace.