HYDERABAD: The dried-up Srisailam reservoir is expected to receive huge quantities of water in the next four or five days. With the lifting of the gates of Almatti, Tungabhadra and Narayanapur dams, the reservoirs in Telangana started receiving huge volumes of water since Tuesday and the inflows increased further on Wednesday.
Jurala, the first project in the state on Krishna river, will start receiving flood waters from Friday. It will take at least two days’ time for the water to reach Srisailam from Jurala.
The outflow from the Almatti reservoir in Karnataka increased to 1.53 lakh cusecs on Wednesday. With heavy inflows into the Narayanapur reservoir, Karnataka officials opened the gates of Narayanapur dam too. The outflow from Narayanapur was 1.46 lakh cusecs and from Tungabhadra, it was 11,000 cusecs.
The inflow into Almatti was 1.53 lakh cusecs and the storage in the reservoir on Wednesday is 113.4 tmcft against the full storage capacity of 129.72 tmcft. The inflows into Narayanapur were 1,53,258 cusecs and the outflows 1,46,560 cusecs. The current storage at Narayanapur is 33.04 tmcft against the full storage capacity of 37.64 tmcft. The inflows into Jurala are 5,000 cusecs and the outflows are 13,405 cusecs. With heavy flood warning, state government officials are releasing Jurala water to Srisailam as a precautionary measure. The current storage at Jurala is 5.71 tmcft as against 9.66 tmcft.
Currently, the Srisailam reservoir has only 29.13 tmcft water. If the heavy inflows continue for some more days, Srisailam will get good amounts of water which will solve the drinking water problems of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states.
If the inflows continue further in the season, then officials may think of sharing the water between AP and TS for agricultural operations.
The Krishna River Management Board (KRMB), which met recently, postponed its decision on Krishna water sharing as there was no water at Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar. Once Srisailam receives a good amount of water, the KRMB will decide the share of AP and TS in Krishna waters.