Reservoirs in the Krishna Basin in the two two Telugu States are set to receive another bout of heavy flood, this time from the Bhima river, a major tributary of Krishna, with the retreat of the southwest monsoon season set to begin soon.
The Central Water Commission (CWC) has issued an advisory to major reservoir in the Bhima Basin in Maharashtra, particularly Veer and Ujjani dams, that they are likely to receive heavy flood over the next few four-five days as the Meteorological Department has forecast heavy to very heavy rainfall in the Central Maharashtra, the catchment area of Bhima, over the next couple of days.
As all the reservoirs in the Bhima Basin, including Veer and Ujjani, are maintaining full reservoir level of water any flood has to be discharged and it is likely to reach Jurala and other projects in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. “The CWC has advised pre-depletion of water in Veer, Ujjani and other dams in Maharashtra since heavy inflows are expected in these dams and the pre-depletion will avoid flooding in the downstream,” a flood monitoring official told The Hindu.
Although, the days of flood during the current monsoon season are spread across about 60 days already, the quantum of flood received is hardly about one-third of the water received by several major reservoirs in the Krishna Basin during the last season. “Jurala had received about 1,446 tmc ft, Tungabhadra got 418 tmc ft, Srisailam received 1,787 tmc ft, Nagarjunasagar got 1,374 tmc ft and Pulichintala about 935 tmc ft last flood season. Accordingly, the discharge of excess water towards sea from Prakasam Barrage was 797 tmc ft,” the official explained.
This year, the projects have received 500 tmc ft, 164 tmc ft, 594 tmc ft, 284 tmc ft and 132 tmc ft, respectively, so far this water year beginning from June 1. Meanwhile, the discharge of flood from Almatti increased again on Tuesday evening to over 30,000 cusecs and from Narayanpur to over 40,000 cusecs.
In the Godavari Basin, Singur and Nizamsagar projects continue to remain almost empty with their storage standing at 3.18 tmc ft and 2.49 tmc ft, respectively, against their capacity of nearly 30 tmc ft and 18 tmc ft. This water year, they have received 3.3 tmc ft and 1.78 tmc ft water, respectively, with some small inflows in between.
