NIZAMABAD: As the Sri Ram Sagar Project (SRSP) has been receiving good and steady inflows for the past few days, official sources told Express on Sunday that the authorities are likely to open the gates of the irrigation project within a couple of days and release water into the Godavari.
The water level has been on the rise for quite some time as the Maharashtra engineers too have been releasing water into the Godavari from the upstream projects and the catchment area received heavy rains recently. Maharashtra officials have also predicted heavy rainfall in the next few days. It is learnt that water from all these sources will start reaching the SRSP from Monday morning.
Speaking to Express, SRSP Superintending Engineer G Srinivas Reddy said that the Maharashtra officials are currently releasing 65,000 cusecs into the Godavari. The catchment areas in Nizamabad and Adilabad districts received heavy rainfall in the past few days and this too has resulted in the rise of the water level. After receiving information from the upper catchment area officials, SRSP engineers consulted higher authorities and the CM’s Office seeking their permission to release water into the Kakatiya Canal. As per the directions from the higher authorities, the SRSP engineers first released 2,000 cusecs into the canal on Sunday morning and later increased it to 4,000 in the afternoon and then increased the discharge further to 5,000 cusecs by night. Now the officials are getting ready to open the gates as SRSp is set to reach maximum level.
SRSP’s threshold water level is 90 tmcft and the full reservoir level (FRL) is 1091 feet. As of Sunday night, the water level has reached 85.910 tmcft and 1090.20 feet and the project is receiving an average inflow of 30,550 cusecs.