AP writes to KRMB to ask TS not to draw water for power generation from Sagar project

Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has written to the Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) to prevail upon the Telangana government to not withdraw water only for hydel power generation purposes from the main powerhouse of the Nagarjunasagar project.

In his letter to the KRMB member-secretary, AP water resources department engineer-in-chief C. Narayana Reddy said that the release of water was resulting in huge inflows into the KL Rao Sagar Pulichintala project. The project had 40.80 tmc ft (thousand million cubic feet) of water against full reservoir capacity of 45.77 tmcft.

He said that the TS government had operated the Nagarjunasagar powerhouses intermittently in the early period of the monsoon last year, which caused repeated operation of spillway radial gates at the Pulichintala project. One of the gates at the project had washed way and had still not been replaced.

Continued release of water to the Pulichintala project would result in the reservoir filling up and the AP government would have to open the gates to let out excess water. Since the Prakasam barrage downstream also had sufficient water, the excess water would have to be let out into the sea.

Maintaining that there would be a lot of demand for drinking water in the summer, the AP official said there was a need to save precious water in the Nagarjunasagar project to meet the requirement.