Incessant rains in local catchment areas as also in the upstream States over the last one week have made almost all major and medium irrigation projects both in the Godavari and Krishna Basins surplus in Telangana, except Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar.
However, the chances of the two reservoirs getting ample inflows over the next one week are very high if the trend of flood release at the upstream reservoirs and barrages such as Almatti, Narayanpur and Sannathi, all in Karnataka, is any indication. The IMD has already forecast more rains in the upstream catchment areas both in Maharashtra and Karnataka.
The heavy flood being released at Almatti and Narayanpur dams has started reaching Jurala from Friday evening and the flood being let out at Sannathi Barrage is yet to arrive at the gateway project. Inflows to Jurala, which were in the measure of 36,500 cusecs at 3 pm, reached 1.2 lakh cusecs by 6 pm. Accordingly, the spillway discharge was increased to 1.23 lakh cusecs from 23 crest gates and another 37,300 cusecs with power generation.
In the upstream of Jurala, the discharge of flood at Narayanpur was 1.58 lakh cusecs and at Sannathi Barrage it was 51,000 cusecs. In the downstream, the inflows reaching Srisailam were at 11,000 cusecs and its storage is still very low at 45.54/215.81 tmc ft. Further downstream, storage of water in Nagarjunasagar was at 141.2/312 tmc ft with hardly 30 tmc ft water reaching Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar together so far this season.
In the Godavari Basin, Singur project in Sangareddy district has a flood cushion of about 5 tmc ft and it will become surplus even if the present inflows of 14,550 cusecs continue for the next five days. Nizamsagar project became surplus on Thursday itself with engineers discharging entire flood reaching it by maintaining the storage at 17.3/17.8 tmc ft.
At Sriramsagar, the engineers have taken to building storage in the reservoir by discharging only 58,000 cusecs flood, 50,000 from 18 spillway gates and 8,000 cusecs with power generation, against the inflows of 1.75 lakh cusecs. The storage was at 81.7/90.3 tmc ft at 7 pm. Flood to Kaddam receded to 15,500 cusecs and discharge was at 25,500 cusecs with storage at 4.36/7.6 tmc ft.
In the downstream, the discharge of flood at Yellampally Barrage was 6.94 lakh cusecs, 13.8 lakh cusecs at Medigadda Barrage and 14.48 lakh cusecs at Thupakulagudem Barrage.
