The level of water at Prakasam Barrage has been built up from 5.5 feet on August 5 to 11.5 feet on Saturday, Water Resources Minister Devineni Umamaheswara Rao said.
Addressing the media, the Minister said that Prakasam Barrage was receiving an inflow of 10,463 cusecs from Pulichintala and Pattiseema projects. While 8,610 cusecs were being received from Pulichintala (Wazinepalli), 153 cusecs from Muniyeru, the remaining 1,700 cusecs were being received from Pattiseema Lift Irrigation Scheme.
The maintenance of 11.5 feet water at the barrage will make the bathing ghats upstream the Barrage the ideal places to take the holy dip.
The Minister said that while 9,083 cusecs were being released into the Krishna Delta Canals for the kharif crop the remaining 1,380 cusecs were being released to bathing ghats downstream.
Meanwhile, the inflows into the Krishna River system from the catchment above Alamatti are on the downtrend. Responding to the change in trend, the Alamatti authorities have reduced the discharge which was 2.4 lakh cusecs on Thursday to 84,000 cusecs on Saturday. Subsequently, the inflows of 1.8 lakh cusecs will come down in the next couple of days. Assuming that the inflows continue at the same rate, it will take more than a week for Srisailam to reach the full reservoir level (FRL) of 885 feet.
The discharge from Dowlaiswaram Barrage on the Godavari is a steady 2.8 lakh cusecs. While releasing 5,300 cusecs into Pottyreddipadu, Srisailam dam is discharging over 60,000 cusecs to NSP after power generation.
