Hyderabad: The first flood waters of the monsoon entered the Almatti dam on the Krishna on Monday. The inflow, however, was small: 1,875 cusecs. Almatti is the first major reservoir across the Krishna in Karnataka.
The Central Water Commission reported that Narayanapur, also in Karnataka, got 2,031 cusecs and Jurala in Telangana state, 6,365 cusecs. Srisailam, the TS-AP inter-state project, and the Tungabhadra dam near Hospet in Karnataka did not get any water.
Engineers expect more water to enter the Tungabhadra in June, as the southwest monsoon first sets in over Kerala and moves towards southern and interior Karnataka, the catchment area of the river.
There was rain in the Agumbe area in Coorg district, but it was not enough for the water to enter the Tungabhadra dam. Last year, tungabhadra was the worst sufferer and got only 17 tmc ft of water in the entire water year. On Monday, it reported a meagre inflow of 227 cusecs.
CWC officials are hopeful of heavy to very heavy rainfall in the Maha-baleswar region in Maha-rashtra by next week, which would bring more water into the Almatti dam. The area is getting rain in the range of 8 to 10 cm.
At Nagarjunasagar, the water level touched 501.9 ft on Monday, almost 10 feet below the maximum draw down Level of 510 ft and full reservoir level of 590 ft.
HMWB has taken up dredging of the foreshore of the reservoir to allow more water to reach the approach channel that connects Nagarjunasagar and Akk-ampalli reservoir, from where it draws 270 million litres of water daily for the drinking water requirements of Hyderabad. Board managing director Dana Kishore said there would be no problem in supplying the city till July.
Water at Srisailam dam stood at 778 ft on Monday, with a dead storage of around 20 TMC ft. This water will be released downstream to Nagarjunasagar in a case of an emergency by the KRM.
