VIJAYAWADA: Heavy inflows continued to reach Srisailam reservoir from Narayanpur and Jurala projects and the officials discharged them to Nagarjuna Sagar and Pulichintala, which have almost reached their full reservoir level (FRL). 

Over two lakh cusecs were reaching Prakasam Barrage from the upper reservoirs as of 8 pm and the officials operated all 70 gates partially to let the water downstream. According to the flood forecast and advisory issued by the Central Water Commission (CWC) on Saturday, the inflows to dams in Krishna basin will increase as rainfall is expected to continue.

The officials said that the flood in  Prakasam Barrage is expected to continue for two-three more days as inflows from reservoirs upstream would continue and rainfall is expected to continue in Krishna basin in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka. “We are getting about 2 lakh cusecs — about `1.87 lakh cusecs from Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar and Pulichintala and 13,000 cusecs from Munneru — and let 1.8 lakh cusecs downstream after utilising about 17,000 cusecs for delta.

The flood, which is likely to continue for two-three days, is expected to rise up to 2.5 lakh cusecs. We operated 50 gates by lifting them to three feet and another 20 gates by two feet on Saturday,” a water resources department official said.

So far, about 67 TMC of water has been utilised from Prakasam Barrage between June and September 12, while 150 TMC of surplus water has been let downstream, the officials added. At 6 pm, Srisailam, which has a water level of 214.5 TMC at 884.81 feet as against its FRL of 215.81 TMC at 885 feet, recorded an inflow of 2 lakh cusecs and was discharging 2.07 lakh cusecs to Nagarjuna Sagar.

Sagar also had over 2 lakh cusecs inflow in the day, but it came down gradually by evening. The multipurpose reservoir has around 1.5 TMC of flood cushion as against its FRL storage capacity of 312.05 TMC. Pulichintala was receiving 87,000 cusecs  from Nagarjuna Sagar as of 8 pm and was discharging 88,000 cusecs to Prakasam Barrage.