Heavy rains in the upstream catchment areas in Karnataka and Maharashtra and the resultant heavy inflow into projects/barrages there have enabled the Irrigation authorities of Telangana to commence spillway discharge at Jurala and Sriramsagar projects on Thursday.
Release of flood at Almatti and Narayanpur dams and inflows from the local catchment areas made the engineers of Jurala project in the Krishna Basin lift two spillway gates of the dam at 12.05 a.m. on Thursday, the intervening night of Wednesday-Thursday, letting out 8,300 cusecs water.
By noon, the spillway discharge was increased to 27,900 cusecs through 7 crest gates and another 42,600 cusecs was also being let into the river with power generation in six units of the hydel station there. Spillway discharge of flood was taken up on July 11 last year and on July 17 in 2021.
According to Central Water Commission (CWC), the discharge of flood at Almatti was 1.75 lakh cusecs and at Narayanpur it was 1.2 lakh cusecs at 6 p.m. and it is expected to increase further. At Sannathi Barrage across Bhima, the flood discharge was 10,000 cusecs. Tungabhadra dam too was getting 1.12 lakh cusecs flood, but its storage was 49.76/105.79 tmcft.
With the release of about 70,000 cusecs flood at Jurala, which is forecast to rise from Friday, the storage of Srisailam is set to swell for the first time this season. As of 6 p.m., storage of Srisailam was 39.2/215.8 tmcft with inflows realised at dam hardly 4,000 cusecs.
Sriramsagar becomes surplus
In the Godavari Basin, the authorities commenced the discharge of flood through the spillway by lifting eight crest gates of the Sriramsagar project to let out to the river 20,800 cusecs and another 4,000 cusecs with power generation. By 8 p.m., the spillway discharge was gradually increased to 2.5 lakh cusecs from 32 crest gates. Inflows were around 2.93 lakh cusecs and storage was at 78.66/90.31 tmcft.
“Last year we have commenced the spillway discharge of flood on the evening of July 10 and it was taken up on July 22 in 2021, on September 14 in 2020 and on September 21 in 2019,” a project engineer explained.
