Delay in the penetration of south-west monsoon rains in the catchment areas of Krishna and Godavari basins, particularly in the upstream States of Karnataka and Maharashtra, is keeping the water level in major reservoirs in Telangana, including the joint storage facilities Srisailam and Nagarjunasagar, low, even 45 days into the rainy season.
A silver line on the horizon, however, appears to be the rising water level in Almatti, swelling fast for the last 10 days. As of Sunday morning, the storage of water in the Karnataka project stands at 93.83 tmc ft against its full capacity of 129.72 tmc ft. On the same day last year, it was just 23.62 tmc ft.
According to the Central Water Commission (CWC) forecast data, inflow into the Almatti project is expected to go up to 1.5 lakh cusecs over the next three days from the present (Sunday morning) 28,000 cusecs. The position of the Tungabhadra project too stands encouraging as its storage was 31.71 tmc ft against the capacity of 105.79 tmc ft with inflow of over 12,000 cusecs, despite ongoing drawals for power generation and canals. The storage of water in the reservoir was just 8.28 tmc ft on the same day last year.
Inflows into Almatti and Tungabhadra projects hold key for Krishna Basin reservoirs in the Telugu States such as Jurala, Srisailam, Nagarjunasagar and Pulichintala, all of which are presenting a bleak picture now with water storage of 7.63, 36.24, 120.09 and 0.67 (all in tmc ft) against their capacity of 9.66, 215.81, 312.05 and 45.77 (all in tmc ft), respectively.
The position of another upstream reservoir in Karnataka, Narayanpur located downstream of Almatti, is also better at 25.83 tmc ft against its capacity of 37.64 tmc ft.
Last year, it was 17.38 tmc ft on the same day. The present rate of inflows and forecast into the upstream reservoirs are likely to make Almatti and Narayanpur become surplus over the next 7 days or earlier, raising hopes of flood reaching the reservoirs downstream.
Water storage levels in the Godavari Basin reservoirs and barrages too are no different either with no significant inflows reaching them. Singur, Nizamsagar, Sriramsagar, Mid Manair Reservoir, Lower Manair Dam, Kaddam and Yellampally have poor water storage levels as on Sunday, and no promising forecast for heavy inflows in the immediate weeks.
With no significant rainfall in the local catchment areas within the State, all medium and small irrigation projects and minor irrigation tanks too are presenting a bleak picture now.
The delay in inflows into them is likely to delay the cultivation of the first crop under them. While the major irrigation projects have an ayacut of 36.17 lakh acres, medium projects have 4.5 lakh acres and minor irrigation tanks another 10 lakh acres.
