Tourists flock to see Jurala in spate

Gadwal: Jurala Priyadarshini project in Jogulamba Gadwal is receiving heavy inflows as the Karnataka government has opened all the gates of upstream Narayanpur project and releasing 1.5 lakh cusecs of water from upstream Narayanpur dam. 

With this, the Jurala project is filled to its brim and attracting many tourists from the surrounding areas, who are visiting to see the scenic beauty of the flushing out water from the 15 opened gates of the Dam. 

According to senior project engineer Khagender, as the inflow is very high and the dam has already reached its full capacity of 9 TMC feet of water and to ensure that the inflow meets the outflow, all the 17 gates have been opened to release 72,000 cusecs of water to downstream Srisailam project. 

All the 4 power houses at Jurala are on full swing producing hydel-electricity from the project. As against a full reservoir level of 318.516 feet, already the water has reached 318.340 feet and the project has already reached to the full capacity with just 0.170 feet of water level left to get filled up to its brim. 

With the Jurala project filled the entire area as far as more than 10-11 kilometres surrounding the Jurala project have been submerged with back waters. The officials have already started releasing water from both its left and right bank canals and water is also being lifted to fill other associated dams like Koilsagar, Bheema and Nettampad from Jurala. 

To see the scenic beauty of Krishna River at Jurala project, thousands of tourists and pilgrims have been thronging the area every day. The bridge over the dam is chocking with occasional traffic snarls as hundreds of vehicles are being stranded on the dam with people stopping their vehicles and enjoying the beauty of the project. The project authorities have put in place security and the traffic police have also put on duty to control the heavy traffic on the dam. 

“This is third consecutive year that we are witnessing heavy inflows into Jurala project. If the inflows continue for some more days then all the Telangana projects and lakes under mission Kakatiya will be filled and we can expect a good Kharif crop in Telangana,” observed a senior engineer.