VIJAYAWADA: A grim situation prevails at the Nagarjunasagar dam with no major inflows into the reservoir while the upstream Srisailam and downstream Pulichintala projects received a good quantum of water as they enjoy good water sources.
Nagarjunasagar project has nearly 24 lakh acres of land as its command area in both the Left Main Canal located in Telangana and in the Right Main Canal in Andhra Pradesh. Though 132 tmc ft of water each was allotted to both, Andhra Pradesh requires nearly 162 tmc ft of water to cultivate crops in about 12 lakh acres of land. Last year, it received a share of just 130 tmc ft for cultivation purposes.
Following rainfall in catchment areas of Krishna river and also filling up of upstream projects like Almatti and power generation at Jurala project, Srisailam reservoir is having 63,016 cusecs of inflow and 21,989 cusecs is being discharged downstream. This has resulted in the reservoir’s water level reaching 846.33 ft with current storage of 72,43 tmc ft (33.56%) against the gross capacity at FRL of 215.81 tmc ft. So is the case with the Pulichintala project as it is filled to capacity. Around 43.54 tmc ft of water (95.13%) is being stored against the gross capacity at FRL of 45.77 tmc ft.
Nagarjunasagar dam has 177.87 tmc ft of water (57%) against the gross capacity at FRL of 312.05 tmc ft with less quantum of inflow/outflow of water.
Water resources authorities maintain that unlike Srisailam and Pulichintala projects, Nagarjunasagar project has only a small quantum of nearly 6,000 cusecs from local catchment areas. They say that unless the reservoir gets filled up to the brim twice in a season, it will not be possible to ensure supply of adequate water especially for cultivation of crops in its command area in both AP and TS.
They say that though there is no immediate requirement of water for cultivation of crops in AP as they start releasing water from August 15, the reservoir has to get good inflow by that time.
Local farmers fear that if rainfall stops and Nagarjunasagar reservoir fails to get filled up, they will have to reckon with shortage of water and may be compelled to take up delayed cultivation of crops.
Nagarjunasagar RMC superintendent engineer Ch. Purushottama Ganga Raju said, “Nagarjunasagar reservoir depends mainly on outflow from Srisailam project besides a small quantum of local sources of water. Nearly 160 tmc ft of water is required for cultivation in the command area beginning from mid-August and lasting up to February. The reservoir has to be filled up twice during that time to enable them to release water even at 540 ft against FRL of 590 ft. We are optimistic and if it is not the case, we may find it tough to release the required quantity of water.”
