The chances of Srisailam reservoir, the lifeline for several irrigation and drinking water systems both in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, getting surplus flood this season have increased with the Central Water Commission (CWC) indicating continuation of heavy flood from the upstream for the next 4-5 days increasing its storage substantially.
According to a CWC bulletin, heavy to very heavy rains at few places and extremely heavy rainfall at isolated places in the catchment areas of the Krishna river and many of its major tributaries have been forecast both in Maharashtra and Karnataka over the next 2-3 days. It is expected to result in heavy flood to the reservoirs across the tributaries in Maharashtra and in Karnataka.
Ujjani dam across Bhima, a tributary of Krishna in Maharashtra, Hidkal dam across Ghataprabha, another tributary, in Karnataka above Almatti, and Tungabhadra dam also in Karnataka are approaching the surplus stage. Release of surplus water from them would bring in heavy flood into Jurala and Srisailam reservoirs in Telangana and AP.
The possibilities of Almatti dam getting more heavy flood have increased with Mahabaleshwar recording 17.7 cm rainfall, Koyna 11.2 cm and Warana 5 cm during the 24-hour period till 8.30 a.m. on Friday. Good rainfall was also recorded at several places in the Central Maharashtra rising water levels in all rivers in the region. As a result, Koyna, Veer, Warana and Ujjani dams are expected to surplus and release flood downstream — into Almatti and Ujjani dams.
As on Friday evening the flood cushion in Ujjani dam was about 35 tmc ft followed by less than 7 tmc ft in Tungabhadra dam and less than 1.5 tmc ft in Hidkal dam. Inflows into Almatti were around 87,000 cusecs, 60,000 cusecs into Tungabhadra and that into Narayanpur around 1.4 lakh cusecs. As a result, Jurala was getting about 1.58 lakh cusecs flood and Srisailam was getting 1.4 lakh cusecs.
Rains in the local catchment areas of Krishna below Srisailam in Telangana and AP would result in heavy inflows at Prakasam Barrage. About 53,000 cusecs of flood was reaching the barrage with rains in the combined Nalgonda and Khammam districts of Telangana and Krishna district of AP.
With heavy rains in the catchment areas of tributaries of Godavari below Sriramsagar project, the flood at Laxmi (Medigadda) barrage was about 1.91 lakh cusecs but it was a whopping 8.48 lakh cusecs at Polavaram with the help of heavy rainfall of 8 cm to 16 cm at several places in the catchment areas of Godavari’s tributaries in Maharashtra, Telangana and Chhattisgarh.
