AIPEF for stopping spillage at Bhakra
yogindra mohan

Patiala

The All India Power Engineers’ Federation (AIPEF) has sought immediate intervention of the union power secretary to prevail upon the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) to stop the wastage of power and irrigation potential at Bhakra.

Padamjit Singh, Chairman of the AIPEF, on Saturday, shot off a letter to the power secretary saying that if the spillage of 4000 cusecs were to be stopped with the present trend at the Bhakra Dam, the corresponding extra increase of reservoir level would be only about 0.15 feet per day. So if the prevailing level was increasing by 0.2 feet per day, in case the spillage of stopped, the increase in reservoir level would not be more than 0.4 feet per day.

He said that considering that filling up to 1685 feet was practically possible particularly during the tail end of monsoon, it was important that the spillage of 4000 cusecs should be stopped immediately.

The AIPEF chief said that if an organization acts over-safe, there is no limit. Practically the risk of filling at 0.4 ft per day is almost zero while the practical gain by way of stoppage of spilling would be of the order of 30 lakh unit per day in addition to the conservation of

irrigation potential.

He said the BBMB was acting over-safe from view point of minimizing the flood risk which is already negligible while in this process, the BBMB was incurring energy loss which will directly impact the DISCOMS of partner States Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal and Chandigarh. It is only a matter of less than a week in which the BBMB can resort to additional storage by stopping the spillage. After this period, once the monsoon withdraws and inflows taper down to less than 32,000 then it will be too late.