Water conservation impacts power output from Bhakra

Vijay Mohan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 20

The Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) has saved a sizeable volume of water to deal with crisis resulting from severely depleted storage in dams, even as power generation at the Bhakra dam took a hit.

Officials of the BBMB said following restrictions imposed on the release of water from dams, regulating water supply in canal network and harnessing rain from tributaries and rivulets downstream from dams, about 2.5 lakh cusec days of water could be conserved in reservoirs.

“This translates to one foot of water spread over 5 lakh acres or roughly 10 per cent of Bhakra’s total storage capacity,” a senior official said.

Power output at Bhakra was just 384 million units (MU) in July, which is about half of the past 10 year average. The highest output in July since 2007 was 893 MU in 2013 and the lowest output for this month since 2007 was 407 units in 2011. Though the water level in important reservoirs in the region has improved, the BBMB will continue to impose restrictions on the release of water from dams to meet requirements of the states in the coming months.

At a technical committee meeting held here on Monday, the BBMB authorities told the member states of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and Rajasthan that the storage in the Bhakra dam had risen to 58 per cent of its total capacity on August 20, which though outside the critical zone, is still not “very comfortable.” The storage had fallen to as low as 18 per cent earlier this year.

“Despite the recent rains, the inflow into Bhakra is about 31,000 cusecs, which is as per the dry pattern, the lowest category of inflow in terms of volume,” a BBMB official said. “Some rain is still predicted by the Weather Department in the coming days and according to our estimation, the storage by the end of the filling season than ends in September may not go beyond 70 per cent,” he added.