ANANTAPUR: The Srisailam reservoir got filled to its full capacity due to arrival of floodwaters from upstream reservoirs and the Krishna river bed on Friday.
Dam authorities lifted five gates, discharging 2.02 lakh of outflows towards Nagarjunasagar as also the power generation units of the dam.
Water storage was at 214.84tmc-ft with 99.55 pc as against gross capacity at an FRL of 215.81tmc at 6pm on Friday. The water level was recorded at 884.84 ft.
This was the first time in a decade that Srisailam touched the FRL due to heavy floods in upstream parts of Tungabhadra and Almatti dams of Krishna basin. Further, timely heavy rains during the South West Monsoon added the additional quantum to fill Srisailam early in the season.
A sudden rise in the inflows from downstream areas due to heavy rains was recorded locally even as Almatti stopped discharging water while the Tungabhadra board confined the discharge to 33000 cusecs of outflows.
Srisailam received inflows of 2.38 lakh with a flood cushion of 0.97tmc. Srisailam dam engineers said the local heavy rains resulted in the joining of Krishna river water towards Srisailam, for it to reach gross capacity at FRL.
Jurala, Sunkesula and Handri sources with their heavy flows increased the heavy inflows to Srisailam on Friday.
Nagaarjunasagar dam was receiving 1.32 lakh inflows after heavy outflows from Srisailam. About 63,000 cusecs of water was used for power generation from both left and right bank canals.
The foreshore water was discharged constantly towards the Handri Neeva main canal from Malyala towards Anantapur and Pothireddypadu towards YSR district.
The reservoirs Pathikonda, Jeedipalli of HNSS project and Gandi, as also the Chitravathi balancing reservoir of GNSS project were being filled.
AP irrigation authorities assessed that the foreshore projects along with SRBC (Srisailam Right Branch Canal) of Rayalaseema will get more inflows this time compared to the previous seasons.
