Mozambique: Cahora Bassa to close sluices at end of April

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Mozambique: Cahora Bassa to close sluices at end of April

2:06 CAT | 12 Apr 2021

File photo: Lusa

The Cahora Bassa (HCB) dam in central Mozambique will halt water discharges by the end of this month, after having opened the floodgates in January due to flooding on the Zambezi River, the company announced today.

“By the end of April, we plan to close all the sluices,” HCB’s Hydrological Systems and Infrastructures administrator, Nelson Trindade, said in an interview with public broadcaster Rádio Moçambique.

Trindade said that the volume of water entering the dam from upstream rivers in neighbouring countries has dropped, allowing HCB to match quantities within its storage capacity.

“At the moment, we are in a period of decreasing water inflows, after having reached a peak of 8,000 cubic metres per second of inflow, a substantial inflow,” he emphasised.

Trindade pointed out that the water released by HCB to the Zambezi’s river areas was not the only cause of the floods registered in the present rainy season in the area, noting that floods were registered in the various courses that cross the region.

“Despite a large volume of inflow upstream, we can consider that HCB judiciously discharged the water. The level of inflow was not sufficient to create major flooding downstream,” he noted.

The increase in the volume of water drained to HCB did not affect electricity production by the company, which projects to increase power generation to 15,766 gigawatts this year from the 14,000 gigawatts achieved in 2020.

Mozambique is in the final stages of the rainy and cyclonic season, which occurs between October and April, with storms coming from the Indian Ocean and flooding originating in the southern African river basins.

A total of 96 people have died due to cyclones and other natural disasters in Mozambique in the current rainy season, according to government figures.

The storms affected 676,314 people and caused 150 injuries and 96 deaths.

The 2018/2019 rainy season was one of the most severe in memory in Mozambique: 714 people died, including 648 victims of two of the largest cyclones (Idai and Kenneth) ever to hit the country.

Source: Lusa