India’s reservoir water level drops for 31st week in a row

Bihar’s sole reservoir Chandan Dam has gone dry along with another half a dozen of India’s major 150 reservoirs even as storage level declined for the 31st week in a row, data from the Central Water Commission showed.

The situation in the southern region continued to cause concern with the level dropping to 15 per cent of the capacity  with the storage in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, in particular, plunging to 7 per cent of the capacity. 

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According to the CWC’s weekly bulletin on live storage status of the 150 reservoirs in the country, the level was 27 per cent of the 178.784 billion cubic metres (BCM) capacity at 47.658 BCM. During the same time last year,  the storage was 79 per cent of the capacity and the average during the past 10 years is 92 per cent. 

Apart from Bihar, the Bhima (Ujjani) dam in Maharashtra, the Nagarajuna Sagar reservoir — which is common for Telangana and Andhra —, the Yeluru reservoir in Andhra Pradesh, the Priyadarshini Jurala and Kaddam (K.N.R) dams in Telangana and the Tattihalla reservoir in Karnataka have zero water in them.