Telangana Rains: Krishna basin projects receives much awaited inflows

Telangana farmers, who were literally on their toes with water levels fast dipping in the reservoirs, now have their Kharif hopes revived

Hyderabad: The Krishna basin projects too have started receiving much awaited inflows bringing cheer to all the three riparian States of Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Telangana farmers, who were literally on their toes with water levels fast dipping in the reservoirs, now have their Kharif hopes revived.

Jurala, the first major project in the basin in Telangana, has started receiving big inflows. The average inflows during the last 24 hours were in the order of 42,000 cusecs. The project’s live storage is close to 9 TMC as against the gross storage capacity of 9.66 TMC.

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The project authorities started releasing some 8000 cusecs for power generation under the multi-purpose project. The flood gates are likely to be opened on Sunday night to let off the surplus flows adding to the inflows to the Srisailam project, which has been receiving 500 to 600 cusecs till Sunday. Water releases to Jurala project’s over 1,02,000 acre-ayacut will be made soon.

The Tungabhadra project, another major source of inflows for the Srisailam project is receiving over 55,000 cusecs. But no water could be let off from the project as its live storage had come down to only 21 TMC as against the gross storage capacity of 106 TMC. But the increasing inflows into the upper basin projects of Krishna are promising.

The Almatti project in Karnataka has inflows of about 1,10,000 cusecs and they are expected to rise further consequent to widespread rains in the catchment. The project could build the live storage up to 65 TMC as against the gross storage capacity of 130 TMC. Continued rains are likely in the catchment till the end of the month holding out hope for all the lower basin projects.

The outflows from Jurala are expected to help build the water levels in Srisailam, which has a live storage of only 33.67 TMC against the gross storage capacity of 215 TMC. Nagarjuna Sagar project levels are rapidly falling as both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh started drawing water from it to meet their drinking water needs.

The live storage of the project has come down to 143 TMC against the gross storage capacity of 312 TMC. The project has been left with hardly 12 TMC of water that could be drawn to meet the immediate needs of the Telugu States.