Chhattisgarh is among nine States in the country with less water in the reservoirs during the current year compared to last year, the Union Ministry of Water Resources has informed.
States having lesser storage than last year for corresponding period are Punjab, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Odisha, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, it informed.
States having better storage than last year for corresponding period are Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Tripura, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, AP&TG (Two combined projects in both States), Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. States having equal storage than last year for corresponding period is Andhra Pradesh.
The Central region includes States of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. There are 12 reservoirs under CWC monitoring having total live storage capacity of 42.30 BCM.
The total live storage available in these reservoirs is 19.03 BCM which is 45% of total live storage capacity of these reservoirs. The storage during corresponding period of last year was 68% and average storage of last ten years during corresponding period was 51% of live storage capacity of these reservoirs. Thus, storage during current year is less than the storage of last year and is also less than the average storage of last ten years during the corresponding period.
The water storage available in 91 major reservoirs of the country for the week ending on January 18, 2018 was 76.694 BCM which is 47% of total storage capacity of these reservoirs. This percentage was at 50 for the week ending on January 11, 2018. The level of water storage in the week ending on January 18, 2018 was 92% of the storage of corresponding period of last year and 92% of storage of average of last ten years.
The total storage capacity of these 91 reservoirs is 161.993 BCM which is about 63% of the total storage capacity of 257.812 BCM which is estimated to have been created in the country. 37 Reservoirs out of these 91 have hydropower benefit with installed capacity of more than 60 MW.
Chhattisgarh was also among four states where the Central Water Commission (CWC) found water storage in reservoirs during 2017-18 to be less than the storage of 2016-17 and was also less than the average storage of last ten years during the corresponding period.