CHENNAI: With the Krishna in spate and the Srisailam dam getting heavy inflows, the State Public Works Department on Monday requested the Andhra Pradesh Irrigation Department to release water into the Telugu Ganga Canal network.

Acknowledging the same, a senior Andhra Pradesh official said: "We will examine the request."

According to information reaching here, the Srisailam dam, built across the Krishna, recorded an inflow of 3.5 lakh cubic feet per second (cusecs) on Monday morning.

The storage was 178 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) against the capacity of 308 tmcft. Around 45,000 cusecs was released from the dam for the Nagarjunasagar dam downstream.

Last year, Andhra Pradesh transferred about 35 tmcft from Srisailam to the Somasila dam, from which water was conveyed to the Kandaleru dam, official sources here said.

Chennai realised 2.7 tmcft of Krishna water during November 2004-February 2005.

Except for a stretch of 12 km between Srisailam and Somasila, the entire distance of 379 km (from Srisailam to the Tamil Nadu border) is covered by a system of canals. On that stretch, water is conveyed through a natural stream, Nippalavagu. (On reaching the border, water has to travel for 25 km to reach Satyamurti Sagar at Poondi, the first storage point in this State.)

Problems in land acquisition

Problems in land acquisition held up work on the construction of a canal. They have now been sorted out and the work is likely to be completed next year.

Water can be transferred from Srisailam to Somasila (for transfer to Chennai) once the storage reaches 121 tmcft. The higher the storage, the more the quantum of water available for Chennai. At present, Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar have water to the extent of only 50-60 per cent of their capacity.

It was, therefore, natural for the Andhra Pradesh authorities to build up storage there for use by local farmers before releasing water to the Somasila and Kandaleru reservoirs, a seasoned water manager said.

At present, the storage in Somasila and Kandaleru is around 3 tmcft and 5.7 tmcft respectively.

Only after the storage reaches 17 tmcft can Somasila spare water for Kandaleru.

Last year, Srisailam had about 240 tmcft when the authorities began releasing water for Tamil Nadu. Enough storage was built up at Somasila and Kandaleru before the water was released to Chennai.

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