Hyderabad: The continuing inflows into Almatti and Tungabhadra dams in Karnataka has raised hopes of both the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh states which are highly dependent on these waters, with Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar dams still recording nil inflows until Saturday.
“We were waiting for a miracle to happen like last year to improve the levels of Srisailam and NS dams,” said M. Krishna Rao, chief engineer of Srisailam project.
“Until July 22 last year, the Srisailam dam continued to be empty, but heavy inflows led to lifting of crest gates of Srisailam dam on July 29 to release waters to downstream NS dam. Last year, in the entire season we got a total 850 TMC ft of water from above which is considered good,” Mr Krishna Rao said.
On Saturday, Almatti dam recorded inflows of 1.55 lakh cusecs touching 90 TMC ft against the total capacity of the dam 130 TMC ft. Almatti dam across the Krishna has 40 TMC ft of cushion. Presently around 20,000 cusecs of water is being released to downstream Narayanapur project in Karnataka from where water will be diverted to canals for irrigation purposes.
“If heavy inflows continue in the coming week then water will invariably be released to Jurala project in Telangana State from where water reaches Srisailam and NS dams, which will be crucial for us in estimating the inflows pattern,” said Telangana State Engineering-in-Chief Muralidhar.
Similarly, Tungabhadra dam near Hospet in Karnataka has also been receiving good inflows in the order of 70,000 to 93,000 cusecs on Saturday raising water levels to 65 TMC ft against the total capacity of 100 TMC ft.
Tungabhadra project officials started releasing waters to irrigation canals in Karnataka and to high level canals in AP. When Tungabhadra reaches its full capacity, the waters will be released into downstream river which joins Krishna river near Alampur.
Much depends on more rains in the catchment areas of Krishna and Tungabhadra in Karnataka so that AP and Telangana states can heave a sigh of relief this year too.
August will be crucial in deciding the fate of Srisailam and NS dams as almost all Krishna-based projects are now waiting for irrigation waters as farming season has already commenced and delayed.
