Inflows upstream give breathing space to TS
Heavy rains in Mahabaleshwar is good news for state
The Jurala and Srisailam dams on Wednesday saw reduced inflows, in the range of 60,000 to 70,000 cusecs.
But inflows are likely to increase in the next few days as Mahabaleshwar, where the Krishna River originates, has received 36 cm of rainfall in the last two days.
This will mean fresh, heavy inflows into the Almatti dam in Karnataka. Both the Almatti dam and the downstream Narayanapur dam already have surplus water, with a steady inflow of around 30,000 cusecs for the last few days.
The Central Water Commission is therefore expecting major flooding to prevail, according to its latest report.
Around 60,000 cusecs of water was released by the Narayanapur dam authorities on Wednesday evening. It has also been reported that 45,000 cusecs was released from the Ujjain dam near Solapur in Maharashtra on Wednesday evening.
All these huge inflows are expected to flow into the Jurala dam in the next two days, and be rereleased downstream to the Srisailam dam which has attained storage of 115 tmc ft against the full capacity of 215 tmc ft, with the level going up to 863 ft against the full level of 885 ft.
Central Water Commission officials expect the heavy inflows to continue till September 25 or 26. This particular development coming at the end of the current monsoon season has definitely helped both Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh overcome a severe drinking water crisis. If both the states restrict their releases for drinking purposes only, there will be no water crisis till the onset of the next monsoon.
Meanwhile, both TS and AP officials on Wednesday resorted to a free-for-all by releasing waters to various projects without intimating the Krishna River Management Board, the authority that decides the amount of water released to various projects in the states.
On Wednesday morning, TS Genco switched on the 6x150 hydro electric units on the left bank of the Srisailam dam and started generating power using around four tmc ft of water.
“There was a problem in thermal power generation today and peak demand touched 8,500 megawatts, so to meet the demand we operated the left bank powerhouse and generated power,” said TS Genco chairman Devulapally Prabhakar.
Andhra Pradesh, which also experienced shortage of power on account of problems in wind and solar power projects, has started three of the seven power units on the Srisailam left bank. Besides this, AP continued to release water to Pothireddypadu and Handri-Neeva projects from the Srisailam dam.