Krishna river is on the verge of going dry'

VIJAYAWADA: The Krishna river has very little water. Even though the average rainfall was better than the previous year's, all dams on the river have reached their dead storage level.

The Krishna basin projects have -72.45 per cent storage this year than the average storage of the previous 10 years.

The river has the highest storage capacity in the country, at 32.831 billion cubic metres in dams across four states. As on May 11, only 1.466 BCM of water is available, or 4.47 per cent of the storage capacity.

The average storage of the last 10 years for the corresponding time is 5.322 BCM, which shows that the storage levels in this river have come down by more than 72 per cent this year.

On the same day last year, the storage was 2.155 BCM.

The combined water projects of AP and TS have -82 per cent of normal storage. Srisailam has just five per cent of its storage capacity and Nagarajunasagar has reached dead storage.

AP has a deficit of 69 per cent in its reservoirs monitored by the Central Water Commission. The Somasila reservoir on the Penna River is at just 12 per cent of its total capacity; the average for the last 10 years has been 38 per cent.

The situation is better in TS' Godavari basin where the average live storage is more than the average of the last 10 years.

Water storage projects in Telangana have 28 per cent more water currently than normal. The Sriramsagar project has 11 per cent of its total storage against 10 per cent normally and the Lower Manair dam has 36 per cent of its total storage against 24 per cent in the corresponding period in the last 10 years.

The situation in the entire southern region is grim with the live storage of reservoirs falling to eight per cent of the total capacity; this was 12 per cent last year and 19 per cent in the last 10 years.