Kariba Dam Water Levels Increase for First Time in 9 Months

(Bloomberg) — Water levels at the Kariba dam that
straddles Zambia and Zimbabwe rose for the first time in nine
months, data from the authority that regulates the world’s
biggest man-made reservoir show.
Levels increased by 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) during the
week ended Feb. 1, the Zambezi River Authority said in a
statement posted to its website Wednesday. That’s the first
weekly gain since at least April. The dam rose to 12 percent of
capacity, after dipping to 11 percent on Jan. 27, as inflows
from the Zambezi river that feeds it increased and rains fell in
the area, it said.
The rising waters could enable the Zambian government to
avert a total shutdown of the hydropower plant at Kariba. Rains,
while erratic, have started and the Zambezi’s water flows are
rising. At the same time, the government has reduced power
generation at the dam to about a quarter of capacity, helping to
stem the decline. Power users including the mines in Africa’s
second-biggest copper producer typically depend on the reservoir
for almost half of their supplies.
“It is unlikely that Kariba will be shut off as measures
have been taken to decrease production from the plant and the
rate of reservoir depletion has slowed as rains, though poor,
increase river flow,” Clare Allenson, a Washington-based analyst
at Eurasia Group, said in an e-mailed note on Jan. 28.
The Zambezi River Authority cut Zambia’s water allocation
at the reservoir by half this year, which will allow it to
generate an average 275 megawatts, from 700 megawatts in 2015,
the government’s Disaster Mitigation and Management Unit said
Jan. 26.
The river continued to rise at the Chavuma measuring
station, which is the furthest upstream from the dam, and was 43
percent higher on Feb. 1 than a year earlier, according to the
authority. At Victoria Falls, flows increased more slowly and
were 19 percent lower than the same time in 2015.