Jurala reservoir, the gateway of Krishna-Bhima waters for the two Telugu States, is set to receive another bout of flood during the first month of the south-west monsoon season, June, as Narayanpur dam has started releasing flood of 46,500 cusecs from Wednesday afternoon.
“Release of flood from the two major upstream reservoirs of the Krishna Basin – Almatti and Narayanpur – has been taken up as a precautionary measure since the flood cushion of the two dams is about 39 tmcft and 13 tmcft, respectively, with Almatti still getting a flood of over 1.17 lakh cuses,” a flood monitoring official said on Wednesday.
The irrigation authorities of Karnataka (engineers of Narayanpur dam) have alerted the engineers of Jurala reservoir on Wednesday morning about the commencement of flood release. They also urged the authorities concerned to alert people along the Krishna river course about the increase of water level in the river.
By 2 p.m. onwards the flood discharge from Narayanpur was increased to 46,500 cusecs including 43,000 cusecs by lifting 8 crest gates of the reservoir and another 3,500 cusecs through power generation. Inflows into Almatti have come down to about 1.1 lakh cusecs by noon on Wednesday but the discharge through the spillway was being continued as the water level in the reservoir reached 517.27 metres against full reservoir level (FRL) of 519.6 metres.
According to the Central Water Commission (CWC) officials, about 5.5 cm rain was recorded in Mahabaleshwar (in Maharashtra), the origin of Krishna river and it is expected to continue the inflows into Almatti further.
“The first three weeks of this flood season have proved to be very optimistic as the flood during the first three weeks of June have allowed power generation in Jurala after many years along with commencement of water release to all canal and lift systems based on the reservoir,” an engineer at Jurala said.
Similarly, about 25,000 cusecs flood was reaching Tungabhadra dam, also in Karnataka, on Wednesday afternoon and the water level was at 489.14 metres against FRL of 497.74 metres.
In Godavari Basin, inflows into Sriramsagar are continuing in a small measure of about 850 cusecs with rain in the local catchment areas. Yellampally, Mid Manair and Lower Manair reservoir are getting inflows with the help of water being lifted from Medigadda as part of Kaleshwaram project.
