WATER STORAGE DECREASES BY 10% DUE TO POOR MONSOONS

Well, if you thought the monsoon in 2014 was weak, erratic, deficient and not bountiful, you are not wrong but if you think that monsoon is over so are the problems with it then you are wrong, because Southwest monsoon or summer monsoon was not only 12% deficient it had far reaching implication in terms of shortage of water supply for drinking, irrigation & power demand.

As per central water commission (CWC) the water storage has decreased by 10% in overall storage capacity of the country as a whole, with 1st Jan as the cutoff date for yearly comparison. India has a total of 85 reservoirs spread all over the country. The total installed storage capacity is 253.388 Billion Cubic meters (BCM). The average total capacity is 155.046 BCM which is about 61% of installed capacity.

A region wise table is given below to indicate total storage capacity in each region & actual capacity as on 1st Jan 2014 & 2015.

 

It is evident that except for central region comprising UP, MP, Uttarakhand & Chhattisgarh, all other region’s storage capacity has declined by about 10% on 1January 2015.

This storage shortage may have adverse impact on water supply during peak summer months, as it affects the supply of potable water, irrigation and power generation. This is mainly due to erratic and deficient rains in summer monsoon from June to September, which resulted in12% deficit. This deficit was expected to be made up during the Northeast monsoon from October to December but as it turned out that even NE monsoon was deficient by 33%, resulting in overall water storage shortage of 10% in 2015.