After the reservoirs in the Krishna Basin getting surplus inflows for over a month now, it appears to be the turn of projects in the Godavari Basin in the State now, including Singur and Nizamasagar, to become surplus, thanks to heavy rains in the catchment areas in Marathwada, North Karnataka and central Maharashtra.
Heavy rains in the catchment areas of Manjira, one of the tributaries of the river Godavari, have swelled the storage of Singur reservoir in Sangareddy district by about 7 tmc ft in a matter of just one-and-a-half days, increasing the prospects of it getting surplus after a gap of three years. “The water storage in Singur was 4.6 tmc ft on Wednesday morning and it crossed 11 tmc ft by Thursday evening,” flood monitoring officials said.
Sriramsagar project became surplus on Monday, for the first time this season, and the next day it was the turn of Mid Manair and Lower Manair dams.
Heavy rains in the catchment areas of Manjira river in the North Karnataka and Marathwada regions have increased the inflows into Singur from just 1,000 cusecs on Tuesday evening to over 61,200 cusecs on Thursday evening.With more rains forecast in the catchment areas of Manjira, the source for Singur and Nizamsagar projects, for the next two-three days the chances of the two reservoirs getting surplus have increased. It was in 2017, about 25,000 acres ayacut under Singur was given water for the first time after construction of the project and poor inflows for the last two years left the farmers disappointed.
“Flows into dams in the Manjira Sub-Basin of Godavari in the districts of Latur in Maharashtra, Bidar in Karnataka, Sangareddy, Medak and Kamareddy in Telangana are likely to increase,” a Central Water Commission (CWC) advisory said adding that as the dams are having very little storage, the inflows may increase the storage in these reservoirs.
As of Thursday evening, the storage in Singur was 11 tmc ft against its capacity of 29.91 tmc ft and that in Nizamsagar was 3.55 tmc ft against capacity of 17.8 tmc ft. Sriramsagar was getting inflows of about 1.11 lakh cusecs, Mid Manair was getting 13,300 cusecs and Lower Manair was getting nearly 35,000 cusecs. Yellampally barrage was getting 93,000 cusecs of inflows.
Krishna Basin
The flood to Jurala, Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar and Pulichintala is continuing in heavy measure with heavy supplementation from Bhima although the discharge of flood at Almatti and Narayanpur has come down below 20,000 cusecs.
“Due to continuing rainfall in Kalaburagi, Yadgir in Karnataka and Rangareddy district in Telangana, river Kagna is rising in these districts which will in turn increase the flows in Bhima river in Yadgir district getting additional flow into Jurala,” the CWC has indicated.
