Raising hopes of farmers under projects in the Krishna Basin in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, flood water let out from Narayanapur reservoir (Basava Sagara dam) in Vijayapura district of Karnataka is expected to reach Jurala project, the gateway of Krishna water for the two Telugu-speaking States, by late on Wednesday night or early on Thursday.
Water let out from the spillway by lifting the crest gates of Narayanapur reservoir from the early hours of Tuesday will travel about 180 km in the river course before reaching Jurala. Water storage in Jurala was 3.58 TMC ft on Tuesday against its gross storage capacity of 9.66 TMC ft.
Official sources stated that it’s for the first time in the recent years Jurala was getting flood water from Karnataka in the third week of July itself. Last year, Jurala received water from Narayanapur only in the first week of September and in the couple of years earlier, water from Karnataka arrived only in August.
When contacted, Executive Engineer of Jurala Priyadarshini dam H.T. Sridhar told The Hindu that over 43,000 cusecs of water was being released from Narayanapur, excluding the water being given to irrigation canals under it. “It will take about a day for storage in Jurala to reach its gross capacity even if the same outflow sustains for 24 hours. Later, water will be released to Srisailam”, Mr. Sridhar stated.
It is being expected that flood from Narayanapur would continue for at least for three-four days even as the inflows into Almatti reservoir above it were coming down gradually. Inflows into Almatti were above 2 lakh cusecs on July 15 and it came down to over 1.88 lakh cusecs on July 17 and to about 95,000 cusecs on July 19. Similarly, the inflows into Narayanapur came down to 93,000 cusecs on July 19 from 1.1 lakh cusecs on July 17.
KRMB meeting today
Meanwhile, irrigation officials of Telangana and AP sit across the table at the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) meeting on Wednesday to work out an arrangement for sharing of the river water.
The meeting to be chaired by Central Water Commission (CWC) officials is likely to discuss the water sharing arrangement along with introduction of telemetry - Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) - system for measuring water being drawn/utilised by the two States.
In the hindsight, the two States are preparing themselves to draw flood water as it is received, through some lift irrigation schemes to begin with.
