Hyderabad: The crest gates of the Nagarjunasagar dam will be lifted at 8 am on Sunday after a gap of four years. The last time the gates were lifted was in September 2014. Irrigation officials have decided to lift four gates to release 28,000 cusecs downstream as the project attained full reservoir level on Saturday by 7 pm. The water will reach the Pulichintala project further downstream in Andhra Pradesh.
The water level at the Nagarjunasagar stands at 585 feet against the full reservoir level of 590 ft and storage at 299 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) against the full capacity of 312 tmc ft. The project was receiving 1,55,187 cusecs of water from Srisailam on Saturday. Nagarjunasagar released 5,598 cusecs through the right canal, 3,910 cusecs through the left canal, 33,373 cusecs to the power house to generate hydel power and 2,400 cusecs to the SLBC.
The Srisailam dam too continued to receive 1,33,753 cusecs of water from the upstream Tungabhadra and Jurala projects. Officials lifted three crest gates at Srisailam to release wat-er to downstream Nagarjunasagar. The gates on Srisailam dam were opened last month in view of continuous inflows from upstream projects on the Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers. The dam has 207 tmc ft of water against the full capacity of 215 tmc ft.
