The Telangana Government has decided to operate two units of 39 MW hydro-electric generators at Priyadarshini Jurala Project for 12 hours a day in a bid to ensure sufficient flow of water in the pushkar ghats in Mahabubnagar district.
The decision has been taken in the wake of the pushakar ghats facing possible water scarcity in the river course following the outflows from Almatti and Narayanpur Reservoirs in Karnataka becoming insignificant by Monday evening. Sources in the Irrigation Department stated that outflows from the two reservoirs in the neighbouring State, the major source of inflows into Jurala, had fallen to 15,000 cusecs and 6,000 cusecs, respectively, with the help of power generation since spillway gates were completely closed.
Jurala gets inflows from the Krishna river course only if there is outflow from Narayanapur in the form of spillway discharges or release of water into the river after power generation. As the inflows into the two major reservoirs in Karnataka were registering a constant down trend for the last few days, the chances of water being let into the river from Narayanapur were also slimming, the officials said.
Spillway discharge stopsSpillway discharges from Jurala were stopped completely by closing the crest gates at around 5 p.m. on Monday and the river course was being supplemented only with water release through power generation and by 6 p.m. only three units (39 MW each) of hydro-electric station were running with the inflows in the reservoir falling to 52,000 cusecs. Storage in the reservoir was about 9.29 TMC ft against the capacity of 9.66 TMC ft at that time.
Official sources said operation of two hydel units for 12 hours a day would result in emptying the storage by about 0.7 TMC ft as each unit requires about 8,000 cusecs water.
“Release of water by operating hydel units has been taken at the Government level since it is necessary to maintain proper flow at pushakar ghats at Beechupalli, Rangapur and others in the district”, the officials explained.
Flow of water in some other pushkar ghats in Mahabubnagar district and all in Nalgonda district is already being ensured from release of water from Srisailam through power generation. The State Government has decided before the commencement of Krishna Pushkaralu to release at least 22,000 cusecs of water from Srisailam into the river course after power generation to maintain water level in pushkar ghats.
Water storage in Srisailam was over 140 TMC ft on Monday evening with the average inflows of about 50,000 cusecs from Jurala.
