Flood to Krishna projects on rise, Sagar gates to be lifted in couple of days

First warning level issued at Bhadrachalam with flood in Godavari at over 9 lakh cusecs

With the rise in flood continuing in the Godavari from Medigadda, where the Pranahitha joins the river, the authorities issued the first flood warning at Bhadrachalam as the level in the river crossed 43 feet there with heavy flood of over 7.3 lakh cusecs being discharged at Medigadda and with flow from Indravathi taking it beyond 9 lakh cusecs.

Flood to projects in the Krishna basin too continues to be on rise with heavy to very heavy rains occurring in the upstream catchment areas in Maharashtra and Karnataka. However, the flood to projects in the upstream of Yellampally in the Godavari basin is on the decline as on Tuesday night.

According to an IMD report, there was very heavy rainfall in Mahabaleshwar (19.7 cm), Koyna (17.5 cm), Warana (13 cm) and heavy rainfall in Shimoga (5.6 cm) and the precipitation is forecast further increase the flood to Almatti, Tungabhadra and Narayanpur dams in Karnataka, which were discharging 1.25 lakh cusecs, 1.59 lakh cusecs and 1.43 lakh cusecs, respectively.

Expecting increase in inflow, which was around 70,000 cusecs at Jurala on Tuesday night, to over 1.5 lakh cusecs by Wednesday morning, the authorities have increased the spillway discharge to 62,500 cusecs from 16 crest gates and another 38,000 cusecs with power generation.

With flood from Tungabhadra and Jurala, Srisailam was getting about 2.75 lakh cusecs and the discharge was nearly 1.96 lakh cusecs from seven spillway gates lifted for 10 ft height each. Another 62,500 cusecs was also being let into river after power generation by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, besides drawals from Pothireddypadu, Handri-Neeva and Kalwakurthy systems.

At Mantralayam, the level in Tungabhadra crossed warning level of 310 metres and was approaching the danger level of 312 meters as flood to Tungabhadra was on the rise.

In the downstream, Nagarjunasagar storage is going up sharply with heavy inflow coming from Srisailam. Storage of the reservoir was over 277 tmcft against its capacity of 312 tmcft as at 9 p.m. on Tuesday. With the flood from upstream likely to go up further, the project is expected to become surplus in two days. According to the authorities the spillway discharge was likely to begin on Friday or even earlier based on increase in the quantum of flood.