Better late than never! It’s proving to be true for projects in the Godavari Basin, which lacked any considerable inflows till July 14, as most of them are discharging flood with incessant rains in the upstream catchment areas in Maharashtra and Telangana.
On the other hand, except for some sizeable flood into Almatti, Tungabhadra and Ujjani dams in the upstream Karnataka and Maharashtra, major reservoirs in the Krishna Basin in the two Telugu States in the downstream are still presenting a bleak picture with minimal storage of water. Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar dams need a flood of 350 tmc ft to become surplus.
As on Friday morning, Almatti was getting an inflow of 71,000 cusecs, Tungabhadra 13,300 cusecs and Ujjani 22,200 cusecs. However, Almatti still has a flood cushion of 91.3 tmc ft, Narayanpur 20.3 tmc ft, Ujjani 70.9 tmc ft and Tungabhadra 92 tmc ft. It’s only when they become surplus, the gateway reservoirs of Telugu States — Jurala and Srisailam — get sizeable flood.
According to the Irrigation department authorities, the storage of Sriramsagar project crossed the half-way mark as it reached 45.2/90.3 tmc ft at 9 p.m. on Friday as a sizeable inflow of 92,600 cusecs was continuing. Similarly, Singur was getting a flood of 12,500 cusecs with storage of 20.4/29.9 tmc ft and Nizamsagar getting 38,700 cusecs flood with 7.9/17.8 tmc ft.
Meanwhile, a flood of over 1.03 lakh cusecs was being discharged at Kaddam against inflow of 40,000 cusecs with storage at 4.2/7.6 tmc ft. Similarly, the discharge of flood at Yellampally was 2.54 lakh cusecs, 5.66 lakh cusecs at Medigadda and 8.9 lakh cusecs at Thupakulagudem Barrage.
