While monsoon struggles to make its presence felt in the country even after the first fortnight of the season, water storage level in country's 91 major reservoirs has dipped to a new low with only 15 per cent of its capacity available. The level had dipped to below nine per cent of the live storage capacity during the 2009 drought.
As per the latest figures from the Central Water Commission, the total storage capacity of these 91 reservoirs is 157.799 Billion Cubic Metres (BCM) of the total storage capacity of 253.388 BCM which is estimated to exist in the country. Of these 37 Reservoirs have hydropower benefit with installed capacity of more than 60 MW.
The Eastern region including the states of Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Tripura having 15 reservoirs have the lowest live storage capacity of 3.25 BCM which is 17% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs.
This is followed by the 12 reservoirs in the Central region including the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh which has 8.59 BCM of water, which is 20% of total live storage capacity. The 27 reservoirs in the Western Region of the country also shared the same fate with water level dipping to 20 percent of its total installed capacity.
The reservoirs in the Southern region fared better at 22 % of the total capacity of 51.59 BCM in 31 reservoirs. The states of Rajasthan West Bengal, Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala were found to have better storage than last year for corresponding period.
Meanwhile, the monsoon is expected to make a recovery in the second half of June, and with this the respective levels of the reservoirs are also expected to improve. Both the IMD and Skymet have predicted above normal rain this season, with a strong possibility of it being heavy during the second half of the season.