Despair turns to hope

After months of despair and nil inflows, it’s time for joy with the Srisailam and Nagarjunsagar reservoirs recording heavy inflows and bringing relief to Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
Irrigation officials and farmers in both the states heaved a sigh of relief on Tuesday with the Almatti Dam, the first major project on upstream river Krishna in Karnataka, receiving heavy flood inflows.
The water worries for the kharif season are slowly receding, officials said as the coastal districts are receiving good rains and the Almatti dam receiving over 70,000 cusecs infl ows every day since the last week.
The water level at Almatti, which was around 18 TMC feet a week ago, jumped to 51.43 following heavy infl ows in the last three days. Almatti has a storage capacity of 129 TMC feet and projects such as Srisailam get waters from the upper stream only when Almatti overfl ows.
Following a prolonged dry spell in upstream of river Krishna, the levels at Nagarjunsagar and Srisailam plummeted to 512 and 834 feet respectively. Srisailam reservoir recorded 834.4 feet on Tuesday against the Full Reservoir Level (FRL) of 885 feet and irrigation offi cials said since Karnataka increased the height of Almatti dam, Srisailam has not been able to receive the fi rst water of the monsoon.
Once the water is released from Jurala project, it is expected to reach Srisailam, which is around 100 km downstream of Jurala, in 24 hours. On Tuesday, about 300 cusecs of water was released from Jurala and irrigation offi cials confi rmed that it would be stepped up depending on the outfl ows from Almatti in the next two days. Similarly, Tungabhadra Dam in Karnataka has also started receiving 60,639 cusecs.
Against the FRL of 1633 feet, the water level of Tungabhadra Dam as of Tuesday stood at 1612 feet with a storage capacity of 39 TMC ft. “August and September are crucial months for both states. If we continue to get over 30,000 cusecs of infl ows daily, it would take 15 days for the reservoirs at Almatti, Narayanapur and Srisailam to get fi lled,” said a senior offi cial in the irrigation department.
Power generation commenced at Jurala hydro-electric project on Tuesday, following which 85 mw of additional power is available for Telangana. However, since there are no infl ows into Srisailam and Nagarjunsagar, power generation is being done only during peak hours to maintain grid frequency.
With the rains arriving almost a month behind schedule, farmers are worried about the water availability in the coming days as paddy is a water-intensive crop and needs regular supply of water. Nearly 13 lakh acres is being cultivated under Krishna delta in the four districts of West Godavari, Krishna, Guntur and Prakasam and any delay in water release from Srisailam and Nagarjunsagar would adversely affect the kharif yield.