Telangana to get 2 tmc water from Srisailam

The Krishna River Management Board after thorough stock-taking exercise, issued orders on Monday releasing two tmc of water exclusively to meet the drinking water needs in Hyderabad city and Nalgonda district. The water so used would be accounted against the respective State for the current water year.

The KRMB Member Secretary Samir Chatterjee, wanted two tmc to be released from Srisailam to Nagarjunasagar project at the rate of 6000 cusecs/day from September 12 to 15.

The releases would include transmission losses too. The water release would be made through the power houses so as to derive the power generation benefit.Pending finalisation of recommendation on sharing of Hydro power by the Ministry of power, the two state governments may share the power generated at Srisailam at agreeable proportion as worked out mutually by the engineers in chief concerned.

The engineers in chief of both the States were asked to take responsibility of reporting the drawls while meeting their requirements in a



joint statement for both Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar projects.

Chatterjee asserted that the water release order shall be “implemented in letter and spirit” by the project authorities concerned.

The Engineer in Chief of Telangana in his letter addressed to the KRMB on August 29 sought release of 2 tmc to meet the drinking water requirements. But the Engineer-in- chief of AP turned down the plea on the plea that the inflows to Srisailam continued to be poor.

But the KRMB decided it in favour of Telangana in view of the considerable improvement in the water levels in Srisailam reservoir which stands at +826.25 ft (with a storage of 45.872 tmc) at 5 pm on Monday. The inflows into Srisailam were in the order of 46,446 cusecs in the day.

Hardening their stand on KRMB approach to the drinking water needs, Telangana irrigation authorities decided to draw water from Srisailam by opening the power house sluices, in the event of a negative response from the board.