ISLAMABAD, July 13: River flows have started rising at an unusual pace forcing irrigation authorities to make heavy and uncontrolled discharges due to capacity constraints at two major reservoirs.
Officials in the federal flood commission told Dawn on Thursday that overall water flows had crossed 666,141 cusecs at 6pm on Thursday from 543,900 cusecs in the morning, showing an increase of about 120,000 cusecs in 12 hours.
They said necessary arrangements had been made to flood control and provincial governments, civil defence, relevant military authorities, irrigation authorities and Wapda had been directed to be vigilant about the flood situation. They, however, said there were no immediate signs of heavy floods so far.
The overall river flows were hovering around 280,000 cusecs or so a week ago, which mean that the rise in flows is more than 60 per cent.
The officials said the water situation was rising quickly and was expected to cause floods in the country given the fact that the Met department had forecast heavy rains in the next few days in some areas, particularly upper Punjab, upper NWFP and Kashmir.
They said the situation in Jhelum and Indus rivers had not yet reached “low flood” stage but Kabul and Chenab rivers were already in the “medium flood and low flood situation,” respectively.
They said water flows were rising so fast that the discharge in the Kabul River at Nowshera, which was recorded at 52,400 cusecs at 6am on Thursday, increased to 78,900 cusecs at 6pm in the evening.
Similarly, flows in Chenab at Marala were at low flood level and hovered around 109,057 cusecs on an average but it was expected to reach medium flood level in case of higher rains as forecast by the Met office.
The mean inflow in the River Indus at Tarbela was recorded at 328,300 cusecs in the morning, which rose to 360,000 cusecs in the evening. Of this, about 200,700 cusecs water was discharged in the evening against 160,000 cusecs discharges approved by the Indus River System Authority.