Bhadrachalam
**Hyderabad:** Telangana State experienced its first heavy rains of the monsoon season since Friday evening. These rains brought relief to the state, which has faced a severe water shortage for irrigation and drinking over the past year.
Good rains in neighboring states have also helped fill reservoirs in the Krishna and Godavari basins. According to the weather office, the state will likely see heavy to very heavy rainfall for the next three days. In response, the Agriculture and Irrigation departments have prepared and informed farmers to start their farming activities actively. Irrigation officials are closely monitoring water levels in every reservoir to prevent rain-related disasters like dam breaches and canal overflows.
Officials reported that the Almatti reservoir is receiving 79,000 cusecs of water, and Narayanpur is receiving one lakh cusecs. With heavy inflows of 83,000 cusecs from Karnataka, the Jurala project in Mahbubnagar is now full of water.
Currently, Jurala has 8 tmc feet of water against its total capacity of 9.66 tmc ft. Officials expect Jurala will continue to get inflows for the next 24 hours. Water levels in the Srisailam reservoir are also rising gradually.
At Srisailam, water levels have reached 36 tmc ft against its capacity of 215 tmc ft, thanks to steady inflows of 81,000 cusecs. Until Friday, the reservoir’s water levels were not more than 20 tmc feet.
The heavy inflows into Jurala and Srisailam are expected to help increase water levels in the Nagarjunasagar dam over the next three or four days. Currently, the Sagar dam holds only 122 tmc ft of its total capacity of 312 tmc ft. Last year, it received no inflows due to insufficient rains. All projects in the Godavari basin are also experiencing high water levels. Singur project, Nizam Sagar, Sriram Sagar Kaddem Narayan Reddy project, Sripada Yellampally project, and Sitaramsagar (Dummugudem) are receiving good inflows due to heavy rains.
Irrigation Minister N Uttam Kumar Reddy has instructed all field engineers and other officials to be available at headquarters for emergency response. He directed them to monitor hourly inflows into minor, major, and medium irrigation projects and operate gates according to guidelines.
The minister also instructed engineers to release floodwaters following standard protocols and issue advance warnings to downstream communities with the help of Collectors and Superintendents of Police in the districts.
