Twelve gates of the Pulichintala Reservoir were lifted to release over 2 lakh cusecs as storage neared the upper limit of 30 tmcft at around 2 p.m. on Thursday.
The discharge reached 3 lakh cusecs a couple of hours later. Minister for Water Resources Devineni Umamaheswara Rao said heavy rain in Guntur district and in the catchment areas of the Musi river caused the increase in inflow to the Pulichintala project. The inflow was expected to reach 4 lakh cusecs, he said.
The 11 cm rain in Macherla, Gurazala and surrounding areas on Wednesday resulted in spate of rivulets that joined the Krishna river below the Nagarjuna Sagar dam. The waters were not from the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam which is the big reservoir upstream Pulichintala. Haila and Musi are two tributaries that join the Krishna upstream Pulichintala and downstream the dam.
Mr. Umamaheswara Rao said that he was keeping his Telangana counterpart T. Harish Rao informed about the flood situation. The Collectors of Guntur in A.P. and Nalgonda in Telangana were monitoring the rise in water level in the Pulichintala project.
The water released from the Pulichintala Project, according to Irrigation Department calculations, should take 12 hours to travel 90 km and reach the Prakasam Barrage at 2 a.m. on Friday.
Alamatti too registered nominal inflows on Wednesday. While it recorded average inflows of 59,000 cusecs, Narayanapur dam got inflows of 61,000 cusecs, Jurala 20,000 cusecs, Srisailam 5,000 cusecs and Nagarjuna Sagar 5,750 cusecs.
Krishna District Collector A. Babu has alerted officials downstream Vijayawada in the wake of floods in the river.
