VIJAYAWADA: Water levels in reservoirs, rivers and other water bodies in the State are more compared to last year. The comfortable position of water levels, besides the forecast of an early monsoon, have made the government decide to go for early release of water from projects to aycuts through the existing canal system.
On May 13 last year, the total water availability in major, medium and other reservoirs was 432.34 TMC and today it was 483.69 TMC. The total capacity of all reservoirs in the State is 983.48 TMC.
As per data available with the Water Resources Department, major reservoirs in the State had 390.14 TMC water last year and today it was 428.94 TMC, while medium reservoirs had 42.12 TMC last year while it was 53.28 TMC now.
Srisailam project today has 35.81 TMC of water as against 33.53 TMC last year, while Nagarjuna Sagar project has 184.18 TMC compared to 179.49 TMC last year. Pulichintala, which only had 11.16 TMC of water last year, has 32.8 TMC now.
Godavari river basin, which had 4.19 TMC of water last year, has only 3.87 TMC now, while Krishna basin has 259.53 TMC of water as against 231.06 TMC last year. Pennar basin has 142.4 TMC of water compared to 111.43 TMC last year.
The 38,381 minor irrigation tanks in the State at present have a total of 129.15 TMC of water as against the storage capacity of 206.06 TMC.
Water Resources minister Ambati Rambabu, during a Cabinet briefing on Thursday, said they are expecting good rains, with a forecast of early monsoon. By going for an early release of water from projects, space will be made for storing more water with expected copious inflows.