Hyderabad: Authorities were forced to release water at Sunkesula barrage downstream of Tungabhadra river, to ultimately reach Srisailam.
However, the inflows are not consistent as of now. “If there is some more rain, a significant amount of water could be stored at Srisailam. By tomorrow (Wednesday), we can expect Srisailam to get around 4 TMC ft of water,” chief engineer of Srisailam (AP) G. Chittibabu told this Deccan Chronicle.
The Krishna River Management Board has decided to limit the entire available Krishna waters stored in Nagarjunasagar and Srisailam dams for drinking water purposes, without apportioning anything for irrigation.
“If 50 TMC ft of water is available above the 510 ft level at Nagarjunasagar Dam, we can ensure meeting the drinking water requirement of Hyderabad city… anyhow whatever little quantity we get due to the recent rains is better than facing the worst crisis ever,” said Telangana state engineering-in-chief C. Muralidhar.
The KRMB had decided to release 4.3 TMC ft water from Srisailam’s dead storage, and the same quantum is now going to be replaced with Tungabhadra inflows, the official said. The Jurala project, the first major irrigation dam on Krishna river in TS also started getting inflows in the range of 7,000 cusecs, which helped the dam storage to go up to 7 TMC ft against a full capacity of 11.9 TMC ft. “We are releasing around 50 cusecs of water for drinking needs in the ayacut area,” said superintending engineer Khagender.
Officials are optimistic that the present rains will ease the drinking water problem in Anantapur, Kadapa and Kurnool districts. However, according to the latest bulletin of Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Board on Tuesday there have been no inflows into any of the sources due to the influence of local rains yet.
