KURNOOL: With less rainfall reported in the catchment areas of River Krishna in upstream Maharashtra and Karnataka and within the State, the Srisailam reservoir has not been receiving much inflows even by the end of the first week of July.
The Srisailam project receives its first major water inflows in June second or third week every water season, but it is yet to happen this time around. "We are waiting for good inflows and sufficient rains during the southwest monsoon. Compared to the previous year, even the local inflows are very low," an irrigation department official said.
He added that the project received just 117 cusecs of water as inflows on Wednesday, as against 1,125 cusecs the same day previous year. The rainfall in the local catchment areas in the district was not that encouraging this season, the official said.
The upstream catchment areas in Karnataka and Maharashtra also reported less rainfall, resulting in no flood water in both Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers, which merge into the Srisailam reservoir.
The good news is that the Srisailam reservoir has a good amount of water, which was stored during the last monsoon. As per Wednesday's water bulletin released by the irrigation department, water storage is better than the previous year.
At present, the project has 43.82 TMC of water against the total capacity of 215.81 TMC while it was 37.30 TMC in the corresponding period last year. The present water level is 823.80 feet as against last year's 814.90 feet.
Dam's FRL is 885 feet. Similarly, there is 50.16 TMC of live storage in the Tungabhadra dam against the 105.77 TMC capacity. And there is 41.46 TMC of water in the Almatti dam against the 110.78 TMC capacity. Irrigation officials, however, are hopeful of receiving more inflows in the coming days.