Water crisis deepens across the country, situation in South India is worrying, level of reservoirs reduced to only 16% left
Water Crisis: CWC monitors water storage in 150 reservoirs and issues weekly bulletins. The Commission said that South India is most affected by the water crisis.
With the onset of summer, the water crisis has started deepening in the country. A significant depletion has been recorded in reservoir storage across the country. According to the Central Water Commission, the storage capacity has decreased from 35 percent to 28 percent during this period this year as compared to last year. CWC monitors water storage in 150 reservoirs and issues weekly bulletins. The Commission said that South India is most affected by this.
24 reservoirs in South India—Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu—are under the Commission's surveillance. The CWC bulletin states that the total storage available in 42 reservoirs is 8.353 billion cubic meters (BCM), or 16 percent of the total capacity of 53.334 billion cubic meters. In contrast to the average storage of the previous ten years over the same period, which was 22 percent, the storage of these reservoirs from now until 2023 accounted for 28 percent of their total capacity. Just 28% of the total storage capacity of 150 reservoirs, or 50.432 billion cubic meters (BCM), are presently stored.
Further, the available storage in reservoirs in the Northern region (including Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, and Rajasthan among others) has been recorded at 6.051 BCM. That is only 31% of the total capacity. Storage during this period last year was 37 percent. At the same time, the eastern region consisting of other states including Assam, Jharkhand, and Odisha has 36 percent of the total storage capacity of 7.45 BCM. The figure is 33 percent during the same period last year.
The western region includes Gujarat and Maharashtra and the storage level there is 11.771 BCM which is 31.7 percent of the total capacity of 49 monitoring reservoirs. This is lower than last year's storage level (38 percent) and the ten-year average (32.1 percent). Similarly, the northern and central regions have also seen a decline in water storage levels.
