BBMB spillage from Pong Dam was worth 493 million units
V K Gupta

A white paper on spillage said, last year, Pong reservoir had been filled up to 1394.5 feet but during the depletion cycle, the water releases from Pong Dam were kept low as per irrigation requirements.
THE SPILLAGE from Pong Dam between August 14 to 31 was 5.4 lac cusecs with loss of power generation potential worth 493 million units. The white paper, released last year said Pong reservoir had been filled up to 1394.5 feet but during the depletion cycle, the water releases from Pong Dam were kept low as per irrigation requirements. The plant load factor of Pong Power Plant during the depletion period were kept low. As a result, the reservoir level, which was 1345 feet on March31, increased to 1351 feet on June 30 whereas it should have gone down.
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Ads by GoogleAs per white paper in July 2011, Pong Power Plant operated at 81% capacity. However, during first 12 days of August the Pong Power Plant generation was reduced to 65%. On August 13, Power generation was stepped up to 100%. On August 14, BBMB opened the spillway gates of Pong when the level was only 1380.4 feet 19.6 feet less than the maximum level. It will be seen that during the period as above, particularly 15 to 21 August, there were releases of the order of 70000 cusecs.
Share Padamjit said that BBMB’s supposed justification for extra spillage at level much below 1400 feet was to create a cushion against future floods, practically during the period 16-21 August. Extra spillage was resorted to which depleted the dam and caused extra releases which made the flood condition downstream more critical.

Now that BBMB has stopped this spillage it should conserve the future inflows for filling up the Dam considering the full reservoir level as 1400 feet and considering that last year the Dam had been filled upto 1394.5 feet. In case inflows of higher than mean pattern occur in the next 20 days, BBMB must conserve these waters and achieve filling to the extent possible keeping in view the full reservoir level of 1400 feet.