With more heavy flood in the offing from the upstream of Godavari in Maharashtra, the engineers at Sriramsagar project have taken to pre-depletion of the reservoir following an advisory of the Central Water Commission (CWC) to maintain safe flood cushion.
As of Friday evening, the authorities of Sriramsagar project (SRSP) have increased the outflows, including release of water to canals, to over 1.28 lakh cusecs against the inflows of about 52,000 cusecs. The storage of the reservoir was 84.81 tmc ft against its capacity of 90.31 tmc ft. The flood to Sriramsagar is expected to go up again following release of surplus water from Jaikwadi, Mula, Manjlegaon and Yeldari dams.
Due to heavy rainfall in the catchment areas these Godavari Basin dams are getting heavy inflows and the release of excess flows the river Godavari is rising upstream of Sriramsagar and Yellampally dams. The release of excess flow would increase the level of Godavari from Medigadda barrage and below in Jayashankar-Bhupalapally, Mulug and Bhadradri-Kothagudem districts.
On Friday evening, the release of flood from Jaikwadi itself was about 75,000 cusecs and it is likely to sustain or increase further over the next few days with heavy to very heavy rainfall forecast for Central Maharashtra, the catchment area of Godavari, and Marathwada, the catchment of some of Godavari’s tributaries. According to irrigation department officials, it would take about 48 hours for the flood released at Jaikwadi to reach Sriramsagar, covering the river course of over 400 km.
The flood to Singur, however, has come down to about 28,000 cusecs and that into Nizamsagar increased to 6,500 cusecs on Friday evening, as their storage stood at 14.2 tmc ft and 4.3 tmc ft against the capacity of 29.9 tmc ft and 17.8 tmc ft, respectively.
According to an advisory of the CWC, rainfall forecast may again increase the flow in the Upper Krishna, Upper Bhima and Upper Godavari basins. Due to continuing rainfall in north interior Karnataka, river Kagna is rising rapidly at Malkhed in Kalaburagi district in Karnataka and this has submerged the road bridge at Malkhed. The flood in Kagna is contributing to the increased flows in river Bhima in Yadgir district resulting in additional flow into Jurala project.
Against the release of less than 30,000 cusecs flood at Almatti and Narayanpur, Jurala was getting 1.58 lakh cusecs with the help of supplementation from Kagna-Bhima.