18 gates lifted at Nagarjunasagar

The current rains, despite the southwest monsoon officially being over, is resulting in records of sorts, particularly with reference to two major dams on River Krishna — Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar. The dams are repeatedly filling up, and authorities time and again are raising the crest gates to let the gushing water out downstream.

Late on Tuesday night, for the seventh time this monsoon, authorities lifted the gates of the Srisailam dam, letting out a whopping 4,66,081 cusecs of water to downstream Nagarjunasagar dam. 

In a cascading effect that began with Almatti dam in Karnataka on the river, Nagarjuanasagar dam officials too did the same, lifting the project’s gates and letting out 4,34,913 cusecs. As much as 3,84,691 cusecs was being released from Jurala, the first major dam on the river in Telangana, which in turn was receiving very heavy inflows from Narayanpur dam in Karnataka. One lakh cusecs of water translates into more than 24,32,000 litres being released every second.

With the fresh round of opening of the gates at Srisailam, the dam this year matched a 25-year-old record of its gates being lifted seven times. However, in 2005, Srisailam dam had to release floodwaters by opening its gates eight times while in 2010, the gates were lifted five times.

While eight gates were lifted at



Srisailam, 18 were opened up at Nagarjunasagar. According to officials, as many as 1,382 TMCft of floodwater, thanks to the unprecedented rains in the Krishna basin, was let out from Srisailam this year. One TMCft of water equals one lakh crore litres. Incidentally, this is also the capacity of Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad.

Srisailam was receiving over two lakh cusecs from Jurala on the Krishna and nearly the same amount from Sunkesula barrage in Andhra Pradesh across the Tungabhadra river. Elsewhere, the Sripada Yellampally Reservoir on the Godavari river was releasing 92,006 cusecs of water as it continued to receive inflows from the upstream Sri Ram Sagar Project, which in turn was letting out 36,142 cusecs of water on Wednesday.

With the India Meteorological Department predicting more rains in the Krishna river basin areas, the flood situation in the river is expected to continue for the next few days. Meanwhile, the opening of the gates at Jurala, Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar and Sripada Yellampally projects turned these dams into tourist attractions with people rushing to watch the water flow from the dams.

One person, identified by the police as Rambabu, was washed away in the Nagarjunasagar left canal at Haliya when he stepped in to the canal for a bath not realising that the heavy current.