The water level in Nagarjunasagar reservoir continues to build up with huge flood being discharged from Srisailam cheering up the farmers of its 22.12 lakh acres ayacut in the two Telugu-speaking States. It has crossed 560 ft on Thursday night, with the storage going beyond 231 tmcft.
It’s still a long way to go before it matches the flood water received by Nagarjunasagar during the last water year, which was over 285.5 tmcft. The quantity of water till Thursday morning was only 108.5 tmcft. However, the storage in the reservoir on August 23 last year was only 115.5 tmcft and the receipt of flood started only toward mid- October.
Heavy floods from Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers reaching Srisailam made the project engineers to increase the flood discharge from the spillway by lifting two more gates, also for 10 ft height each, after 5 a.m. on Thursday in addition to resumption of flood discharge through five gates after 7 a.m. on Wednesday. One more gate was lifted for the same height after 7 a.m. on Thursday to take the spillway dishcarge to over 2.18 lakh cusecs from eight gates besides release of nearly 73,000 cusecs of flood from the power houses.
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Over 2.91 lakh cusecs of flood, in all, was being released from Srisailam to Nagarjunsagar on Thursday night with the inflows recorded at about 3.2 lakh cusecs. The storage in Srisailam was 206.1 tmcft against its capacity of 215.81 tmcft and the level was at 883.3 ft against the full reservoir level of 885 ft at 9 p.m.
Besides discharge of flood to Nagarjunasagar, 24,000 cusecs was being drawn from the Pothireddypadu head regulator and 2,400 cusecs for Handri-Neeva lift by Andhra Pradesh and another 2,400 cusecs for Kalwakurthy lift by Telangana from Srisailam reservoir. The Central Water Commission (CWC) has issued a forecast stating that there would be fall in inflows into Almatti, Narayanpur and Tungabhadra reservoirs in Karnataka till Friday night. Accordingly, the inflows into Jurala and Srisailam are expected to decline. However, the flood is likely to continue for Srisailam for a few more days. Meanwhile, inflows into Sriramsagar in the Godavari basin fell to a meagre 2,510 cusecs at 6 p.m. on Thursday with the storage in the reservoir recorded at 70.31 tmcft (1,086.1 ft level) against the capacity of 90.31 tmcft (1,091 ft).