KURNOOL: With good rains in the upstream catchment areas due to early onset of monsoon, the Srisailam reservoir got inflows much earlier than last year.
With good inflows into Sunkesula reservoir in Kurnool and from Jurala project in Mahabubnagar district of neighbouring Telangana, the officials of both reservoirs released water downstream two days ago and the water reached Srisailam dam on Friday late night. At present, Srisailam reservoir was getting 21,241 cusecs of water from both Tungabhadra and Krishna rivers as inflows.
Out of the total, 4,311 cusecs of water is from Sunkesula reservoir through Tungabhadra river and 16,930 cusecs of water from Jurala project via Krishna river. With these inflows, water level at Srisailam reservoir is steadily increasing minute to minute.
According to official records, based on Saturday’s water level statement, there is 34.8300 TMC ft of water available against the total capacity of 215.8070 TMC in the dam and water level has reached 810.09 feet against the dam’s full reservoir level (FRL) 885.00 ft.
An irrigation official said the water release from both Jurala and Sunkesula downstream generally started from July first week, but this year it occurred earlier due to early rains in the local catchment areas.
On the other hand, with present rains in local catchment areas in both Telangana and AP, the Sunkesula barrage was getting 3,698 cusecs of water from upper side and same water was releasing downstream into Tungabhadra River while there was 1.11 TMC of water stored in the barrage against its total capacity of 1.20 TMC.
Similarly, Jurala project is also getting 13,300 cusecs of water from Narayanpur dam and the project officials have been drawing 20,074 cusecs of water including 16,823 cusecs for power generation. At present, the project has 8.670 TMC of gross water in the dam for its full reservoir level capacity of 9.657 TMC feet of water.
Water level
34.83 TMC ft: water available in Srisailam dam
215.81 TMC ft: Total capacity
Water level: 810.09 feet
Full reservoir level: 885 ft