The engineers of Nagarjunasagar Project (NSP) lifted eight crest gates on the spillway after 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, in addition to the 18 gates discharging flood already to increase the discharge to nearly 2.68 lakh cusecs. This is the fourth instance during the last 15 years when the project authorities lifted all the 26 spillway gates to discharge flood.
NAGARJUNASAGAR
“Last time, it was in August 2022 when all the 26 crest gates were lifted to discharge the flood and before that, it happened in August 2019 and in October 2009, when a historic flood of over 25 lakh cusecs almost spilled over the Srisailam dam. On October 5 that year, Nagarjunasagar dam discharged over 11 lakh cusecs flood when all the 26 crest gates were lifted,” a senior engineer of the Irrigation Department told The Hindu, recollecting the sea of flood.
Starting from 11 a.m. on Monday, the project engineers lifted 16 crest gates of NSP till 6 p.m. that day, and four more were lifted in the wee hours of Tuesday and another two in the morning that day. Later, some gates were closed gradually and till 9.30 a.m. on Thursday, 18 gates were discharging flood – 14 lifted for 10 feet height each and four others for five feet height each.
After 9.30 am four gates were kept lifted for 10 feet height each and the remaining 22 for 5 feet height each and they were discharging flood in the same position as at 6 pm. The storage of the reservoir was being maintained at 300/312.5 tmc ft with inflow of about 3.95 lakh cusecs reaching it.
More flood to Jurala
With Almatti and Narayanpur dams in Karnataka continuing to discharge over 2 lakh cusecs of flood and Tungabhadra dam, also in Karnataka, over 40,000 cusecs, Jurala project is getting additional flood from Bhima as the spillway discharge of flood at Ujjani dam across Bhima river in Maharashtra, about 450 km in the upstream, commenced on August 5 night.
By noon on Thursday, inflow to Jurala had crossed 3 lakh cusecs with water from Bhima supplementing the flood being released from Almatti-Narayanpur.
In the Godavari Basin, major projects till Yellampalli continue to get lean to moderate inflows and they are yet to become surplus this season. Together, Singur, Nizamsagar and Sriramsagar projects still have a storage cushion of over 62 tmc ft water, the volume of water needed for them to become surplus together.
However, the projects and barrages from Yellampalli have received inflows to become surplus already though the gates of Yellampalli project are yet to be lifted this season, with diversion (pumping) of water to Kaleshwaram Project network reservoirs in progress from July 27, initially at about 1.25 tmc ft a day to over a half tmc ft day now.
Published - August 08, 2024 07:48 pm IST
