The Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) has issued one more water release order within a gap of 12 days, this time for releasing 10 tmc ft water from Nagarjunasagar to the Krishna Delta System (KDS), to “meet the drinking water requirements of Krishna, Guntur and West Godavari districts” in Andhra Pradesh.
In order to meet the fresh requirement of AP, the board has asked both AP and Telangana to release 12 tmc ft water from Srisailam to Nagarjunasagar to enable supply of 10 tmc ft water to KDS through power generation at Srisailam from August 7 to 18 at the rate of one tmc ft every day.
The fresh order comes even before the completion of release of ordered on July 27, when the board directed the two States to release 52 tmc ft water from Srisailam to Nagarjunasagar at the rate of 2 tmc ft every day from July 28 to August 22, also through power generation at Srisailam. However, in 11 days of water release from the power houses at Srisailam till August 7 only about 10 tmc ft water has been let into the river course for supplementation of 510 feet plus level in Nagarjunasagar.
“We have been releasing the water through power generation every day and about two-thirds of the quantity released into the river course at Srisailam has been through the Left Bank power house controlled by Telangana. There has been no improvement in releases by AP even after the river board has chided it for not sticking to the orders issued in consultation with them,” a senior irrigation engineer stated. By now, about 22 tmc ft water should have been released from Srisailam to Nagarjunsagar.
Telangana has been releasing water through power generation at Srisailam by running the generation units during the peak demand hours in morning and evening to prevent back down of generation in TS-Genco’s thermal power stations, official sources in the power utility said. Thus, the hydel generation at Srisailam has been serving the dual purpose of releasing water to Nagarjunasagar and preventing back down of generation in thermal units since re-starting the units after shutdown is not only a time-consuming process but also involves high cost to take the unit to generation stage again, the officials explained.
Member-Secretary of the river board A. Paramesham stated that the fresh orders too have been issued after holding telephonic discussions with the Engineers-in-Chief of the two States on August 3 and 4.
