Water woes in Telugu states to end with heavy rainfall in Karnataka, Maharashtra

Heavy rains in Maharashtra and Karnataka are all set to end the water woes in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh which have been facing a drought-like situation for the last two months.

Major reservoirs of Jurala, Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar on the Krishna River have been receiving massive inflows from upstream reservoirs of Narayanapur and Almatti in Karnataka. This has happened because of heavy rains in the catchment areas of the river in Maharashtra from its source regions for the last 10 days.

“For the first time in the last 10 years, there was a discharge of nearly four lakh cusecs of water was released from Almatti dam towards Narayanapur and from there, 4.5 lakh cusecs to the downstream into Krishna River on Tuesday evening,” an official in the flood monitoring wing of the Telangana irrigation department said.

On Wednesday morning, nearly 3.90 lakh cusecs of water was released from Almatti and 3.72 lakh cusecs from Narayanpur. The water from Narayanapur will reach Jurala, the first major reservoir in Telangana, which received 2.91 lakh cusecs. From Jurala, water reaches Srisailam and then to Nagarjunagar, Pulichintala and finally to the Krishna delta system through the Prakasam barrage in Andhra Pradesh.

The water level in Srisailam reservoir at 9 am on Wednesday was 871 ft, as against the full reservoir level of 885. “Already, there has been a discharge of 73.447 cusecs of water from the Srisailam reservoir and as the inflows are increasing steadily, there will be more discharge of water, which reaches Nagarjunsagar. At present, the water level in Nagarjunsagar is 510.6 ft, as against FRL of 590 ft,” he said.

Once these two reservoirs become full, expectedly in another two weeks if the same inflows continue, there will be no water problems for the two Telugu states for irrigation as well as drinking water for at least the next one year, the official said.

Similarly in the Godavari basin, the river is in spate right from its origin at Nasik in Maharashtra due to heavy rains. While water level in the Sriramsagar project, the first major reservoir in Telangana over the Godavari River, was 1055.10 ft as against the FRL of 1091 ft, the water level in Yellampalli Sripadasagar project was 484.91 ft as against the FRL of 485.56 ft.

Due to the construction of the Kaleshwaram project on Godavari River, the barrages at Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla are filled to the brim and water is being released to the downstream by lifting the gates. “A total of 1,906 minor irrigation tanks, including 1,834 in Godavari basin were getting surplus flows,” the department official said.

The north-coastal Andhra Pradesh region is also receiving heavy rains for the last 24 hours due to a depression in the Bay of Bengal, according to the reports from Real Time Governance Society (RTGS) in the state secretariat. Major rivers of Nagavali and Vamsadhara in Srikakulam are receiving heavy inflows. “More rains are expected in the next 48 hours,” the RTGS authorities indicated.