The Telangana government has requested the Centre to immediately take action on the repairs of the plunge pool formed below the SriSailam reservoir. After a meeting of Irrigation Minister Uttam Kumar Reddy with the department officials on the Srisailam project on Monday night, Principal Secretary Rahul Bojja wrote a letter to the Union Water Resources Department Secretary on the dam’s management conditions.
The letter stated that a deep hole has formed below the Srisailam dam due to heavy floods in the Krishna river every year, and that several committees, including the NDSA, have studied this and warned that the dam is under threat. It was explained that several recommendations have also been made regarding repairs, and that the Telangana government has also written letters to the Krishna Board and the NDSA (National Dam Safety Authority) several times.
The dam gallery and sluices are also not in good condition. The Dame Safety Organization has also written a letter to the NDSA, and Kanhaiya Naidu, an expert on project gates, has expressed his concern over the maintenance of Srisailam gates. He said that while Telangana is taking over the management of the Nagarjuna Sagar project, the maintenance work has been completed recently.
He said that the management of the Srisailam project is under the jurisdiction of AP, but the state is ignoring the dam, and the letter requested the Center to respond immediately and take the initiative to ensure that Andhra Pradesh takes over the management and repairs of the project.
Due to the rains in the upper states, Krishna river is overflowing. As a result, the Srisailam reservoir is inundated. Currently, 1,71,550 cusecs of water is entering the dam. The maximum water level of the reservoir is 885 feet, but it has now reached 880.80 feet. The water capacity is 215 TMC, but it is already overflowing with 192 TMC. Officials estimate that it will reach the full water level in a few hours.
In this context, the officials decided to release the water downstream on Tuesday. The senior officials of the Water Resources Department reported the matter to AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, who is visiting the project on Tuesday.
This year, due to abundant rains from June onwards, the flood flow is heavy. The water flow that started from June 1 and reached 125 TMC till July 5 in the Srisailam reservoir. The average for the last 15 years is 12.26 TMC for this period. With this, Srisailam water will be released in the first week of July like never before. While the gates were lifted on July 30 last year, it is noteworthy that the gates are being lifted three weeks before that now.