The abundant flow of water from upper riparian states into the reservoirs and moderate to heavy rain has brought cheer to the farmers of the state who had witnessed the second consecutive year of failed monsoon.
Though the rains arrived almost a month late, the sowing of crops began in all most of the districts of the state on Tuesday.
With inflows from upstream Karnataka, Krishna water has been released to Srisailam project from the Priyadarshini Jurala project by lifting 22 of the 79 spillway gates.
The water in Jurala stood at 318.420 feet against its full reservoir level of 318.516 feet. Similarly, as the Pranhita river, a tributary of Godavari river began to provide continuous inflows, engineers have stopped reverse pumping of water at Medigadda, Annaram and Sundilla barrages under the newly built Kaleswaram project.
Sripada Yellampalli and Kadem projects are also receiving a steady inflow of Godavari water. Varada and Wainganga rivers are in spate and the barrage gates at Medigadda were lifted to let the water flow downstream. In Andhra Pradesh, Godavari river is in spate near Rajamahendravaram with 8 lakh cusecs of water reaching from upper catchment areas.
The authorities have so far released 11,000 cusecs to delta canals and the remaining goes to the sea. Several villages in Devipatnam block and 19 agency villages under Polavaram project are under the threat of floods.
For the first time, flood water has flown through the spillway at Polavaram project site. Water has been left through ten reverse sluice gates to reduce pressure on the cofferdam. With this, connection and power supply to several villages were cut down since Tuesday. The floodwater level at Polavaram spillway is at 11.75 meters and will touch 13 meters, the engineers say.