With heavy to very heavy rains continue to lash the catchment areas of river Krishna and several of its tributaries, the Central Water Commission (CWC) has forecast heavy discharge of flood from Almatti to Narayanapur, over 11 tmc ft in the 24-hour period up to 8 am on Monday.
As a precaution, the authorities of Narayanpur dam in the downstream of Almatti, has increased the flood discharge to over 2.37 lakh cusecs although it was getting about 1.8 lakh cusecs, the same measure as being released downstream from Almatti, on Sunday evening. The inflows into Almatti were about 1.17 lakh cusecs in the evening and they were forecast to go up to 1.29 lakh cusecs with the trend of further increase.
Officials stated that Mahabaleshwar, the major catchment area of Krishna, recorded 20.3 cm rain and the catchment areas of its tributaries Koyna (18.2 cm) and Warana (7.8 cm) also received heavy to very heavy rain during the 24-hour period up to 8.30 am on Sunday. As a result, inflows into Almatti and Ujjani dams are on the rise although the latter has a flood cushion of about 20 tmc ft.
Accordingly, Jurala project is expected to receive a flood of about 6.5 tmc ft in the 24-hour period up to 8 am on Monday. The inflows into the Krishna river’s gateway project in Telangana-Andhra Pradesh have already crossed one-lakh cusecs on Sunday evening and the flood monitoring officials have indicated that the flood would increase gradually in proportion to the flood discharge at Narayanpur. It would take about 24 hours for the water released at Narayanpur to reach Jurala in the measure it was being discharged.
Tungabhadra dam, on the other hand, is expected to reach surplus position at least by Monday night and the discharge of flood from there is likely commence by that time. On Sunday evening, the storage crossed 98.6 tmc ft against its capacity of 100.86 tmc ft and the project was getting a flood of over 33,000 cusecs with nearly 12,000 cusecs being released to canals.
In the downstream, storage of water in Srisailam has crossed 145 tmc ft against its capacity of 215.81 tmc ft as on Sunday night (9 pm) with inflows of over 1.31 lakh cusecs. It is forecast to get over 10.5 tmc ft water in the 24-hour period till 8 am on Monday.
Similarly, the storage in Nagarjunasagar crossed 250 tmc ft against its capacity of 312 tmc ft with inflows (supplementation) of over 42,000 cusecs from Srisailam.
In the Godavari basin, water storage in Sriramsagar crossed 45 tmc ft against its capacity of 90.31 tmc ft as inflows into the project increased to over 46,000 cusecs and Lower Manair Dam was getting over 28,000 cusecs flood with storage crossing 16 tmc ft against its capacity of 24 tmc ft. Flood at Laxmi (Medigadda) Barrage across Godavari is forecast to cross 7 lakh cusecs and that at Polavaram to cross 14 lakh cusecs. The flood level in Godavari at Bhadrachalam has crossed 53 feet.