AP hopes monsoon will bail it out

[1]

Hyderabad: AP, which has been suffering from acute scarcity of water due to the failure of the monsoon last year, is now desperately hoping for a recovery as all reservoirs and other water bodies have touched rock bottom. The irrigation needs of over 70 lakh acres under the Godavari and Krishna river based projects, supply of drinking water to various cities including the state capital, townships and villages, and the fate of hydel electricity generation all depend on the southwest monsoon which alone contributes to 90 per cent of inflows into the state.
For the first time, the state faces a shortage of over 650 TMC ft of water availability against capacities in the dams. A similar situation also exists in the upper riparian states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. AP irrigation requirements depend on inflows from these upper states.
Almatti and Narayanpur dams on the river Krishna and the Tungabhadra dam in Karnataka have recorded levels much below dead storage. In the Godavari basin, all Maharashtra projects above the Sriram Sagar project are already empty. Even the Sriram Sagar project, has only 10 TMC dead storage water which cannot be tapped. Singur, the principal drinking water supplier to the twin cities records only 5 TMC ft of water against its 30 TMC ft capacity.
Adding to the woes, heavy sedimentation in all major dams in the state like Tungabhadra, Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar and Sriram Sagar have reduced capacities drastically. Also, the reduction in the number of flood days is a cause of major concern to the state.
Earlier, there used to be a minimum 90 flood days, so Srisailam, and Nagarjunasagar continued to receive water and used to impound more water after meeting requirements to various projects under them. But for the last few years, the situation has changed, and flood days are being reduced to 35 to 45 days, while water requirement under these dams has increased manifold due to several projects taken up under the Jalayagnam scheme.
It is expected that 10 lakh acres under the Godavari delta will not have any problem this year because even with rains in local catchment areas and inflows from Chhattisgarh and Odisha, the kharif crop can be raised to its full extent.
Engineering-in-chief (projects) C. Muralidhar said, “We pray and hope for a good situation this year, as all reservoir water levels are below dead storage levels (water cannot be tapped from dead storage levels), the situation is tight in the upper states too. We cannot predict anything at this stage.”