In anticipation of further rise in inflows from upstream projects in the next 24 hours, four of the 12 radial crest gates of the Srisailam project were lifted on Friday evening, letting out one lakh cusecs of water into Nagarjuna Sagar Project.
Ministers from Telangana S Niranjan Reddy and V Srinivas Goud joined Andhra Pradesh Minister for Irrigation P Anil Kumar at the project site to perform the formal pooja for the river goddess before releasing water.
NSP has an ayacut of 23 lakh acre in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, and the release of water from Srisailam should bring cheer to farmers in both the States. In fact, the water release to NSP was scheduled for Saturday, but was advanced in view of the sudden rise in discharge from upstream projects in Karnataka.
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Radial crest gates No 6 , 7 , 8 and 9 of Srisailam project were opened one after the other as water began gushing out of the project and touched the full volume of 25,000 cusecs from each one of them within minutes. The release provided an exhilarating sight for those present at the dam.One or two more gates are likely to lifted late in the night depending on the inflows received. The inflow into the project is in the range of 3.16 lakh cusecs and it is rising further. About 1.69 lakh cusecs of water is being received from Tungabhadra river. The upstream Jurala project, which is receiving an inflow of 4,75,000 cusecs, has a discharge of 4.98 lakh cusecs.
The water level in Srisailam project touched 880 ft against the Full Reservoir Level of 885 ft at 6 pm. The project’s live storage was 193 tmc against its designed gross capacity of 215.81 tmc at the full reservoir level of 885 ft. The project is receiving more than 40 tmc of water a day with all the upstream projects including Jurala in Telangana maintaining heavy outflows. In addition, Bhima river, which is in spate, is also expected to add another 2.5 lakh cusecs tonight.
In addition to the one lakh cusecs released after opening the crest gates, another 70,000 cusecs was being let out from Srisailam project for power generation. On the whole, the inflow into NSP is over 1.77 lakh cusecs, according to the NSP Chief Engineer Narsimha Rao.
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Quoting the CWC forecast , he said the project might continue to receive big inflows for the next three to four days and it may brim to capacity in the next seven to eight days. He informed that the NSP as on Friday was holding a gross storage of 148 tmc with the water level touching 517 ft against the gross storage capacity of 312 tmc at FRL of 590 ft.
The Narayanpur dam in Karnataka is receiving an inflow of 4.7 lakh cusecs and the same volume is being maintained as discharge. As a precaution, a flood cushion of some 40 tmc is being maintained in Almatti dam. In view of heavy rains in Krishna catchment in Karnataka and Maharashtra, the maximum flood flow was let out from the project during the past three days. The inflows and outflow of the project are 3.49 lakh cusecs and 3.84 lakh cusecs respectively.
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