Heavy flood swells Srisailam storage

Heavy to very heavy rains in the upstream likely to get more flood

The prospects of Srisailam reservoir, one of the two common water storage facilities of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, reaching the surplus position have improved considerably with the catchment areas in the Upper Krishna Basin continue to record heavy to very heavy rainfall. “Storage of the reservoir improved by nearly 20 tmc ft during the 36-hour period till 6 p.m. on Saturday, in spite of sizeable amount of water being let downstream with power generation in the Left Bank power house. The discharge of flood at Almatti, Narayanpur and Jurala dams in the upstream is on the constant rise during the period and there is a forecast of flood into Jurala going up to 5 lakh cusecs or beyond,” a senior engineer monitoring flood at Srisailam told The Hindu. At 6 p.m. on Saturday, Srisailam storage has reached 93.6 tmc ft against its capacity of 215.8 tmc ft with almost one tmc ft volume of flood reaching it every hour from 11 a.m. Although the discharge of flood at Almatti remained at 3.5 lakh cusecs from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., the inflow increased from 2.2 lakh cusecs to 2.57 lakh cusecs during the period with the forecast of further rise in the flood.