Jurala, Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar and Pulichintala projects in the two Telugu States are expected to get huge flood over the next two-three days in spite of let-up in the rain in the local catchment areas as there was a heavy rainfall in the upper Krishna, Bhima and Tungabhadra catchment areas during the 24-hour period up to 8.30 a.m. on Thursday.
Quoting IMD reports, an advisory issued by the Central Water Commission (CWC) stated that there was 140 mm rain in Ujjani dam area, 136 mm in Augumbe, 126 mm in Mahabaleshwar, 92 mm in Veer dam area, 81 mm in Almatti dam area and 64 mm in Koyna dam area during the period.
“As all the reservoirs in the sub-basins of Krishna are full any flood reaching them would invariably be released downstream,” flood monitoring officials told The Hindu.
‘Maintain caution’
As the CWC has advised authorities of all dams in the Krishna Basin to maintain a safe flood cushion by taking up pre-depletion of water since huge flood was expected to reach them, the engineers at Jurala and Srisailam projects have already taken up the task of discharging about 6 lakh cusecs of flood each although the inflows were in lesser measure.
“Flood level in Bhima at Deongaon bridge in Kalaburagi district has crossed danger level of 404.5 metres on Thursday night and it is expected to go up further,” an irrigation official at Jurala said.
The discharge of flood wafter at the Jurala project was about 5.9 lakh cusecs from 50 spillway gates on Thursday night and it was in the same measure at Srisailam too with 5.64 lakh cusecs from 10 spillway gates lifted for 25-foot height each and another 26,500 cusecs of fflod water from the right bank power house.
In a flood warning message that was issued to the authorities of Nagarjunsagar, the Superintending Engineer of Srisailam project, Mr K. Srinivasulu stated, “The Krishna river is receiving heavy flood due to heavy rainfall in the upstream catchment. In anticipation of flood to accommodate the inflows, Srisailam reservoir water level is being depleted to 880 ft, against full reservoir of 885 ft, level to maintain buffer”.
Sagar outflows
At 9 p.m., the outflows at Nagarjunasagar also increased to over 5 lakh cusecs as the inflows were about 4.84 lakh cusecs.
The flood water being released at the Srisailam project would start reaching Nagarjunasagar in the wee hours of Friday.
In Godavari Basin, all projects including Singur, Nizamsagar, Sriramsagar, Mid Manair, Lower Manair, Kaddam, Yellampally and others were also getting good inflows of flood water.
