Heavy rains across the State for the last three days have improved the water storage in several medium irrigation projects and minor irrigation tanks considerably, with a majority of them reaching surplus stage already, although several major irrigation projects which depend on flood from upstream States are yet to get water in excess of their capacity.

The variation of rainfall recorded district-wise so far this monsoon season, however, has been very high ranging between 142% large excess rainfall and 27% deficient rainfall, with 12 of the 33 districts getting large excess rainfall, another 12 witnessing excess rains, 8 districts recording normal rainfall and one district (Nirmal) deficient rainfall.

According to the officials, distribution of rainfall mandal-wise has been somewhat different with 38 of the 589 mandals remaining deficient, another 50 having near deficient although they are among the 181 mandals with normal rainfall technically, 204 mandals recording excess (20% to 60%) rain and the remaining 166 mandals getting large excess (over 60%) rainfall than normal. Nirmal district has 14 out of 15 mandals, Jagitial has 7 out of 18 mandals and Adilabad has 6 out of 18 mandals with deficit rains.

Officials of the Irrigation Department explained that 18 out of 36 medium irrigation projects in the Krishna and Godavari basins have already reached surplus position and releasing excess flood as it is coming and another half-a-dozen projects are approaching the surplus position. The projects releasing excessing flood include Nallavagu, NTR Sagar, PP Rao Project, Nilwai, Ralivagu, Gundlavagu, Lakhnavaram lake, Ramappa lake, Palemvagu, Peddavagu, Taliperu, Kinnerasani, Kotipallyvagu, Pakhal lake, Wyra and Bayyaram tank.

The medium irrigation projects have an ayacut of over 4.48 lakh acres and water allocation of over 104 tmc ft. Against their combined capacity of over 62 tmc ft they have about 51 tmc ft water stored them including in the projects releasing the surplus flood.

Among the minor irrigation tanks, 12,214 out of 20,111 in Godavari basin have already started releasing excess inflows and another 2,400 tanks are approaching the surplus stage and nearly 2,000 tanks have received water beyond 50% of their capacity. Besides, about 1,700 tanks have received water between over 25% and below 50% of their capacity and the remaining have water below 25% of their storage.