The spillway gates of Jurala project in Jogulamba-Gadwal district were opened on Friday evening after a gap of 12 days to discharge flood of over 25,600 cusecs from the seven gates lifted for one-metre height eachopened at 6.15 pm and corresponding spillway discharge is 25613 cusecs (7 gates-1m).
Another 25,000 cusecs of flood was also being let into the river course with power generation. “The discharge of flood has been in the measure of over 50,000 cusecs together although the inflows into the dam are about 25,000 cusecs at 9 pm. However, the decision has been taken based on the Central Water Commission (CWC) advisory and the expected rise in the flood to the reservoir all through the night”, flood monitoring officials at Jurala said.
Discharge of flood at Almatti was about 1.8 lakh cusecs and at Narayanpur it was nearly 1.88 lakh cusecs at Narayanpur. The CWC has forecast that flood to Almatti would be over 8.2 tmc ft in 12 hours starting from 8 pm on Friday with the expected inflows likely to be about 1.91 lakh cusecs. Similarly, the flood into Narayanpur is assessed to be around 6.6 tmc ft with inflows in the range of 1.52 lakh cusecs and that into Tungabhadra dam would be around 4.75 tmc ft with inflows of nearly 1.1 lakh cusecs.
In its inflow forecast-cum-advisory for Srisailam dam, the CWC officials said: “Due to very heavy rainfall in the upper Krishna basin from past 2-3 days, heavy inflows are observed in Almatti, Narayanpur and Jurala dams giving rise to higher outflows. Subsequently, heavy inflows are expected at Srisailam dam and it may lead to cross it’s threshold limit on Saturday based on the discharges from Jurala”. The CWC authorities have also asked the authorities of the three dams to monitor the situation and operate the releases accordingly.
According to the flood monitoring officials, there was very heavy rainfall of 19 cm in Augumbe, the origin of Tunga river, 15.3 cm in Koyna, catchment of Koyan river, 14.5 cm at Mahabaleshwar, the origin of Krishna river, and 8.8 cm in Warana, the catchment of Warna river, a tributary of Krishna, during the 24 hours preceding 8.30 am on Friday. “All this will result in continuous heavy inflows into Almatti, Narayanapur, Jurala and Srisailam”, the officials said.
The tributaries of Krishna and Tungabhadra in Karnataka are also in spate and they are likely to further increase the flood into the reservoirs in the basin, starting from Almatti. “The combined flows from Krishna, Doodhganga, Panchganga and Ghataprabha will be realised at Almatti dam and the inflow will rise rapidly. Necessary pre-depletion is advised to be done from Narayanpur to maintain cushion for the incoming flood”, the officials explained.
