Heavy inflows into Jurala project

Heavy inflows into Priyadarshini Jurala project continued with 2,26,000 cusecs of flood water inflows recorded on Sunday prompting irrigation officials to continue releasing 1,87,000 cusecs to Srisailam project downstream of Krishna river.

Due to the heavy rains in Maharashtra, there were inflows of 2,20,000 cusecs into Almatti project located in Karnataka. Outflows from Almatti were 2,39,000 cusecs, which were released into downstream Narayanpur project with inflows of 2,36,000 cusecs and outflow of 2,25,000 cusecs.

Meanwhile, 0.50 tmcft water is being used for various lift irrigation schemes in erstwhile Mahabubnagar district from Jurala. A total of 1,875 cusecs were released from Jurala into its Right and Left main canals.

There is a provision to utilize 87.20 tmcft water for various lift irrigation schemes across the district of which 40.20 tmcft could be utilized for Kalwakurthy Lift Irrigation Scheme which is dependent on Srisailam backwaters. Whenever flow of flood waters has been left, only 35.05 tmcft could be utilized in its full capacity.

However, for the past five days, 3.05



tmcft was being lifted through various lift irrigation schemes in the region. In the past 19 years, the maximum inflows into Jurala was recorded in 2005-2006 with 1,635 tmcft water whereas least inflows were recorded in 2015-2016, with just 45 tmcft inflows. During the same period, around 11,000 tmcft flood waters reached Jurala project.

The maximum inflows on a single day recorded at Jurala was during the 2009 floods when 11.40 lakh cusecs of inflow was recorded. All the 64 gates of the project were opened that year to release water downstream. Srisailam project too reached the water level of 847 feet this year as against its Full Reservoir Level (FRL) of 885 feet due to heavy inflows from Jurala. The water storage in Srisailam has gone up from 31 tmcft to 70 tmcft on Sunday against its total storage capacity of 215 tmcft.

According to Mangesh Kumar, the Executive Engineer at Srisailam power house, if the present trend of heavy inflows reaching Srisailam project continues, in a couple of days, power officials will be gearing-up to generate 1,050 million units of power this year.