Upstream dams dry up, affect Telangana, AP

Hyderabad: The hopes of Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh, that they would receive the first inflows in the river Krishna in the current season, were dashed on Wednesday as rain in upstream catchment areas stopped and inflows into the Almatti and Tungabhadra dams was reduced drastically. 

The Almatti dam received 1.44 lakh cusecs on Tuesday morning, which suddenly reduced to 86,530 cusecs on Wednesday after rains in Mahabaleshwar where the river originates almost stopped. According to the Central Water Commission, there will be little rain for the next one week.

It was a similar situation with the Tungabhadra dam that received 33,000 cusecs yesterday, and was down to 18,653 cusecs today because of reduced rainfall in Agumbe, where the Tunga river originates.

Engineers of both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were expecting good inflows into the Jurala dam as the pattern of heavy inflows into Almatti and Narayanpur dams would release water downstream within three days. But due to the decrease in rainfall in Mahabaleshwar (on Monday, the rainfall was just 5 cm) the whole picture has changed. As a result, less water was released to downstream Narayanpur from the Almatti dam (from 33,000 cusecs to 20,000 cusecs on Wednesday).

The level of the Almatti dam is 1,700 feet against a full level of 1705 feet, and storage stands at 104.65 thousand million cubic ft against full storage capacity of 130 tmc ft. This leaves a flood cushion of about 25 tmc ft and the authorities have started building up the level instead of letting the water downstream into the Narayanapur dam.

The Narayanapur dam has attained a level of 1612.8 ft against full level of 1615 ft and storage stands at 34.61 tmc ft, against full capacity of 37.65 tmc ft. Officials started releasing water to the area served by the dam and balancing the inflows and outflows.

Much depends on fresh rains in the catchment area before the Telugu states can actually hope for water from the Krishna.

There is a huge gap to fill in the Tungabhadra dam. Water currently stands at 1,608.65 ft against the full level of 1,633 ft and storage has touched 32.74 tmc ft against full capacity of 100 tmc ft.