Hyderabad: The heavy rains in Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Nalgonda districts have caused heavy inflows into the Musi, resulting in officials on Tuesday opening the crest gates of the only major irrigation dam on the river near Kathepally in Suryapet district.
Officials opened six crest gates and released 11,800 cusecs into the river. This water ultimately will flow into the Krishna river and benefit the Pulichintala project. Deputy executive engineer K. Navakanth told this newspaper that in view of heavy inflows, of at least 50,000 cusecs over the past two to three days in upstream catchment areas (Hyderabad), they have decided to release the existing storage (3.84 tmc ft) as a precautionary measure.
“We will build up storage based on the flood situation. At present, we need to release the waters downstream as we cannot take chances of managing such heavy inflows into the project, Mr Navakanth said.
The Pulichintala dam across the River Krishna is about 100 km from the Musi project and it is expected to start receiving the floodwaters by Tuesday midnight. Pulichintala dam presently has 7.85 tmc ft water, against its full capacity of 45.77 tmc ft. As such it can store the present Musi flood.
In a related development, Singur dam on the Manjeera river on Tuesday reached its full storage level of 29.91 tmc ft forcing dam officials to release 11,600 cusecs to Nizamsagar downstream.
“We will maintain 29 tmc ft storage level at the dam. Whatever surplus waters we receive, we will release to Nizamsagar till the inflows ease,” dam chief engineer R. Madhusudana Rao said. Presently, Singur is getting around 5,500 cusecs of inflows.
