Heavy rains in the local and upstream catchment areas of the Godavari in Telangana and Maharashtra, respectively, are helping heavy inflows into Sriramsagar, Mid Manair and Lower Manair dams with spillway discharge commencing in the latter two projects for the first time this season on Tuesday.
According to the flood monitoring officials, the discharge of flood from the spillway of Sriramsagar project (SRSP) was about 50,000 cusecs from 16 crest gates lifted for two feet height each against the inflows of nearly 74,500 cusecs. The met department has forecast more rains in the catchment areas of Godavari over the next three days and based on it the Central Water Commission (CWC) has indicated more flood to these dams. Along with discharge of flood from the spillway of SRSP over 20,000 cusecs of water was also being released to different canal systems – Kakatiya, Lakshmi, Saraswati – including nearly 10,400 cusecs to flood flow canal to supplement water to Mid Manair Reservoir (MMR) and other minor irrigation tanks linked to it.
The discharge of flood at Lower Manair Dam (LMD) was started on Tuesday evening with the release of about 40,000 cusecs from the spillway. The LMD was getting over 42,300 cusecs including 27,000 cusecs from the river and 14,000 cusecs from MMR. The authorities of water resources department are maintaining water storage in SRSP, MMR and LMD near full reservoir level.
According to rainfall data of the Lower Godavari Division of CWC, heavy rain was recorded in Jagtial (13 cm), Pegadapalle and Dummugudem (12 cm each), Kohir, Yellareddy, Bhiknur and Aswaraopet (9 cm each), Reddipet, Tedapalle and Nandipet (8 cm each) – all in Telangana – Santhpur (12 cm) and Humnabad (10 cm) in Karnataka and Saigaon (8 cm) in Maharashtra during the 24-hour period till 8.30 a.m. on Tuesday.
As a result, Singur (1,000 cusecs) and Nizamsagar (1,240 cusecs) were also getting some inflows, although water level in the two projects is hardly 10% and 15% of their capacity of 29.91 tmcft and 17.8 tmcft, respectively.
In Krishna Basin
An advisory of the CWC stated that heavy rainfall warning issued for Madhya Maharashtra was expected to bring heavy flood to Veer and Ujjani Dams in Maharashtra and as all reservoirs in the Upper Krishna Basin are full the excess flood in Bhima, one of the main tributaries of Krishna, is likely to reach Krishna above Jurala project in Telangana. The CWC has also advised the dam authorities in Maharashtra to go for pre-depletion in order to avoid flooding both in the upstream and downstream areas.
Spillway discharge of flood at Almatti, Narayanpur, Jurala, Tungabhadra, Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar and Pulichintala projects is also continuing with the help of good inflows.
