Tungabhadra dam at 22 TMC ft level after heavy rains

Anantapur: Rains and heavy floods from Western Ghats led to constant inflows into the Tungabhadra reservoir, which witnessed 22.82tmc-ft level and 23,079 cusecs of inflows on Tuesday, as against 3.08tmc-ft the same time last year. Rise of inflows to Tungabhadra dam strengthened hopes on the drinking and irrigation sources of Rayalaseema region and Karnataka, including for power generation. The TB dam had only 280 cusecs of inflows last year, which had resulted in a year-long water crisis in the Krishna basin.

The dam’s level was 1,600.99 ft on Tuesday evening as against total capacity of 1633 ft. The Tungabhadra Board said it is confident to meet the demand for both AP and Karnataka. The allocations could be more than the assessed quantum on damasha basis, HLC superintendent engineer Rajasekhar observed. Timely rainfall during the South West Monsoon in the western ghats region kindled hopes for the dam to have full



capacity of water within a short time. The reservoir's total capacity is 104tmc-ft.

Meanwhile, Almatti reservoir, the main source under Krishna basin for the Srisailam dam, was also receiving constant inflows from upstream Maharashtra for the past few days. On Tuesday, Almatti had 78,668 cusecs of inflows and it received water that filled about 57 per cent of its capacity. The Krishna basin has an area of 589tmc-ft while 213tmc-ft was available in the dependent sources, so far.

The Srisailam reservoir has 1049 cusecs of inflows and 1600 cusecs of outflows. At present, Srisailam has about 37tmc-ft storage as against 215tmc-ft of full capacity. Last year, Srisailam faced worse conditions. It was unable to meet the needs of Rayalaseema region through the Pothireddypadu, Handri Neeva Sujala Shravanthi and Galeru Nagari Sujala Sravanthi projects.