Inflows diminish due to lack of rain in Telugu states, only Srisailam witnesses rise

Hyderabad: Inflows into major projects in Telugu states have started receding with no major rains in the upstream states. Only Srisailam among all the major projects was getting increased inflows on Friday.

The dam witnessed a marginal increase in inflows from 1,64,665 cusecs on Thursday to 1,78,097 cusecs on Friday. Water in Srisailam stood at 870.40 feet against the full reservoir level of 885 feet, a record of sorts in recent years. It holds 143.41 tmc ft against gross capacity of 215.81 tmc ft.

Unless Srisailam gets more inflows and fills up, the chances of any significant volume of water being released into Nagarjunasagar dam look remote. On Friday, Nagarjunasagar had no inflows but released 460 cusecs to meet the drinking water needs.

The current water level in Nagarjunasagar is 511.10 ft against FRL of 590 ft, and storage was at 133.54 tmc ft against gross capacity of 312.05 tmc ft.

Upstream on the Krishna, the Almatti and Narayanpur dams in Karnataka and Jurala in TS, and the Tungabhadra projects also in Karnataka continued to receive normal inflows.

In the Godavari basin too, four projects Singur, Nizam Sagar, Sriramsagar project and Lower Manair had zero inflows.

Kaddam and Yellampally projects recorded negligible inflows of 709 cusecs and 649 cusecs respectively while outflows were 656 cusecs and 649 cusecs.

The Telugu states have pinned hopes on Almatti and Narayanpur dams in Karnataka filling up and releasing water downstream to fill the dams in the Krishna basin.

At Almatti, the water level stood at 1702.36 ft against FRL of 1705 ft. The Narayanpur had 1,612.83 feet of water against the FRL of 1,615 ft.