The authorities of Nagarjunasagar dam have planned to lift the spillway gates of the reservoir on Friday morning with discharge of heavy flood continuing at Srisailam dam in the upstream of Krishna river.
After commencing the flood discharge from the three crest gates of the spillway of Srisailam at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, the dam authorities increased the gates to 10 at 6 p.m. on Thursday to let a flood of over 2.75 lakh cusecs into the river in addition to the release of another 71,000 cusecs from the power houses of TS-Genco and AP-Genco. The flood released at Srisailam would approximately take eight hours to reach Nagarjunasagar.
The dam authorities lifted two more gates around 10 a.m., another two more around 2 p.m., lifted one more gate around 4 p.m. and lifted two more around 6 p.m. on Thursday to take the total gates lifted to 10. The 10 crest gates are lifted for 10 feet height each as the flood to the reservoir increased gradually. At 6 p.m., around 4.18 lakh cusecs of flood was reaching the dam against the discharge of 3.5 lakh cusecs at Jurala (Krishna) and over 93,000 cusecs at Sunkesula Barrage (Tungabhadra).
Superintending Engineer of Nagarjunsagar dam I. Madhusudan has informed the authorities of Nalgonda and Suryapet (Telangana) and Krishna and Guntur (Andhra Pradesh) districts along the Krishna river course downstream of the dam that they plan to let out flood from the project spillway on Friday morning in view of the increasing inflows into the dam.
A forecast issued by the Central Water Commission (CWC) has indicated that over 22 tmc ft of flood would reach Almatti during the 24-hour period up to 8 a.m. on Friday and over 23 tmc ft into Narayanpur during the same period. Similarly, the organisation has forecast arrival of about 32 tmc ft flood into Jurala during the 24-hour period up to 6 a.m. on Friday and over 35 tmc ft of flood into Srisailam reservoir during the same period. On the other hand, Tungabhadra dam is expected to get over 5 tmc ft flood during the 24-hour period up to 8 a.m. on Friday. Nagarjunasagar dam was getting flood of over 2.52 lakh cusecs at 7 p.m. on Thursday with the water level crossing 576.2 ft against full reservoir level of 590 ft and the storage crossing 272 tmc ft against its capacity of 312 tmc ft. The TS-Genco has also taken up power generation at the dam site power house from 2 p.m. on Thursday letting about 26,000 cusecs water into the river course.
According to the flood monitoring officials, Almatti dam was getting inflows of over 2.69 lakh cusecs at 6 pm and discharging 2.5 lakh cusecs flood, while about 2.7 lakh cusecs flood was reaching Narayanpur.