Brimming Almatti, Narayanpur and Tungabhadra dams in Karnataka have forced authorities to release water downstream. This has resulted in copious inflows into Srisailam dam over the past few days.
The Srisailam dam, which had reached a low of 790 ft as against full reservoir level of 885 feet and full storage capacity of 215 tmc, has seen the water raising to 850.3 feet (as of 5 pm) in the past three-four days.
It has been receiving flood water from Tungabhadra, and also from Jurala, enabling the latter to generate about 310 mw of hydel power and also release water to Srisailam.
According to data from the Reservoir Monitoring Systems, the Srisailam dam has been receiving more than 2,19,368 cusecs of water as Almatti dam, whose full reservoir level is 1705 feet has water up to 1702 ft and releasing 1,71,068 cusecs and Narayanpur dam whose FRL if 1615 ft and current level of 1611.5 ft releasing 1,49,843 cusecs.
The water that is being released from Karnataka through Almatti and then from Narayanpur is flooding the Jurala project, which is able to generate hydel power from all of its units and in the process is also releasing water from hydel plants and by lifting crest gates downstream.
About 1,72,746 cusecs is being released to Srisailam.
If the current trend continues, Srisailam dam is expected to get more water and its capacity could significantly go up from about 80.5 TMC as against full storage capacity of 215.8 tmc.
However, the huge Nagarjunasagar downstream on the Krishna has not received much inflows. As against its FRL of 590 ft, it is currently at 510.9 ft and as against full storage of 312 tmc, the current storage is merely 133 tmc.
The huge inflows into Srisailam augurs well for irrigation in the catchment areas upstream of the dam. However, the filling up of both Srisailam and later Nagarjunasagar would make both Telugu States, who are lower riparian States, happy both for irrigation and drinking water security.
Unlike last year, the dams on Krishna river system have seen good inflows in July itself, bringing cheer to the farming community.