Andhra Pradesh: Water to Srisailam down to 49,000 cusecs, flood 'receding'
Hyderabad: With the Central Water Commission declaring that the flood situation in the Krishna river is “receding”, the Almatti reservoir in Karnataka has stopped releasing water to the downstream river following a meagre inflow of about 10,000 cusecs per day. It is the same story at the Tungabhadra dam near Hospet in Karnataka, which is getting 45,000 cusecs of water. As a result, there has been a steep fall in the inflows to the Srisailam dam, which caters to the water needs of Telangana, Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra.
At the moment, Srisailam inflows have dropped to 49,000 cusecs, against outflows of about 75,000 cusecs. Since there is demand from all the three regions, and especially the downstream Nagarjuna-sagar dam where there is a need to build up storage, the Srisailam authorities are pushing more waters out of the dam than what it is receiving.
“All the upstream dams are almost full. However, if there is no significant contribution by way of rains in the catchment area, whatever little inflow they get will be used locally. Unless fresh heavy rainfall is there, we may not meet the demands at Srisailam,” said chief engineer M. Krishna Rao.
Normally, at this time of the year there are continuous floods and more rains in the catchment areas are also expected. However, this year, the biggest worry for the engineering officials is that the Nagarjunasagar dam is still 140 TMC ft short of its full capacity.
“There is a demand from both NS Left and Right canals, besides the Krishna Delta requirements. Similarly, we need to supply waters to all the three regions from Srisailam. Currently, the requirements exceed the inflows,” said an official.
As far as the Godavari basin projects are concerned, except the Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage at Rajahmundry, all the remaining projects located in the upstream areas in Telangana state remain with no inflows.