Major reservoirs both in the Krishna and Godavari basins in the State are presenting a bleak picture as most of them remain empty and are yet to receive flood even 45 days after the commencement of south-west monsoon season.
The situation prevails in spite of heavy rains recorded in the catchment areas of upper Krishna and upper Godavari basins in Karnataka and Maharashtra.
As the major reservoirs in the Krishna basin in Karnataka such as Almatti and Tungabhadra are getting considerable flood for the last week-10 days, the hopes of reservoirs in the State such as Jurala, Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar getting water sooner than later are on the rise.
The irrigation authorities of Karnataka have already started releasing flood to Narayanpur from Almatti, which was getting over 1.14 lakh cusecs of inflows as on Sunday morning.
Almatti
“We can pray for continuation of flood either in the same measure or higher so that water could be released from Narayanpur towards Jurala in less than a week. At the rate of about 1.14 lakh cusecs nearly 11 tmc ft water is added to Almatti every day and it would take only about five days for the reservoir to reach its full level,” a flood monitoring official at Jurala said. He stated that as on Sunday morning the storage in Almatti was 70.6 tmc ft against its full capacity of 129.7 tmc ft.
The official recollected that it was on July 18 morning last year, release of flood from Jurala to Srisailam was commenced through generation of power in one unit at Jurala. The very next day the discharge of flood through the spillway started and continued for nearly 10 days and another bout of flood commenced in the second week of August, he explained.
Godavari basin
In total contrast, the situation in the Godavari basin is more worrisome as major reservoir in the upper riparian Maharashtra such as Jayakwadi have not received any considerable flood so far this season. The position of Sriramsagar, Lower Manair and Kaddam reservoirs is more worrisome due to lack of flood, although Godavari has been getting good flood from its tributaries Pranahitha and Indravathi.
Flood in Pranahitha has been helping the Kaleshwaram project authorities to lift the water from Medigadda barrage through Kannepally pump house to the upstream of the river into Annaram barrage. Nearly 43 tmc ft of flood has already been discharged into the sea from Dowlaisawaram barrage in Andhra Pradesh, where about 65% flood contribution is from Pranahitha and Indravathi sub-basins.
