Hyderabad: Pulichintala, the last reservoir across the Krishna river, continued to receive heavy inflows of about 60,000 cusecs on Wednesday evening due to heavy rains in the catchment area of the Musi and Halia tributaries.
TS irrigation minister T. Harish Rao spoke with his AP counterpart Devineni Uma Maheswara Rao and requested him to open the flood gates at Pulichintala to avoid more submergence of villages in Nalgonda district as rehabilitation measures for people in the Pulichintala foreshore villages had not been completed.
Talking to DC, Mr Uma Maheswara Rao said the AP government had asked the Guntur collector to coordinate with his Nalgonda counterpart to take a decision on opening the gates.
Mr Rao said Pulichintala was, for the first time, getting good inflows without waiting for discharge from Nagarjunasagar, and the government had decided to store the water for future requirements of the Krishna Delta. According to officials it will be a waste to open Pulichintala flood gates now as there is no immediate requirement at Prakasam barrage.
Pulichintala superintending engineer M. Venkata Ramana told this newspaper that there were no orders to open the gates. The Pulichintala dam on Wednesday evening had 14 tmc ft of water against the total capacity of 45.77 tmc ft. Another 10-15 tmc ft of water is expected in three days.
Due to the rise in the Pulichintala storage, seven villages in Nalgonda district located in the foreshore of the dam are being submerged. Though the AP government has paid for relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of all the affected villages, the TS government had delayed shifting them as there was no immediate threat of submergence.
In a related development, Prakasam barrage officials have started releasing flood waters into the Bay of Bengal due to inflows from Munnair and Palair tributaries between Pulichintala and Prakasam barrage.
Prakasam barrage authorities have asked Pattiseema lift scheme officials to stop diverting Godavari waters into the barrage citing the inflows. The demand in the Krishna delta fell due to overflowing drains joining the canals. Around 18,000 cusecs of water is reaching Prakasam barrage.
At the Srisailam dam upstream, officials are not releasing 18,000 cusecs per day to downstream Nagarjunasagar as ordered by the Krishna River Management Board as there is no demand.
