Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), the company that operates the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi, in the western Mozambican province of Tete, has warned that it will increase the discharges from its floodgates to 3,550 cubic metres a second as from Saturday.A note from HCB, received by AIM on Friday, states that this is because of the announcement by the Zambezi River Authority in Zambia, that the floodgates on the Kariba dam will be opened on Saturday to come with a heavy inflow of water into the Kariba lake, caused by heavy rainfall in the upper Zambezi basin. Increased Cahora Bassa discharges threaten flooding on the lower Zambezi, and so HCB urged members of the public to leave flood prone areas near the banks of the Zambezi and its tributaries.The increased discharges are almost double the 1,900 cubic metres a second that HCB has been releasing over the past fortnight or so. Nonetheless, the volume of water to be discharged is much less than that released by the dam in late December, when HCB increased the discharges to 4,500, then to 4,950 and eventually to 5,200 cubic metres a second.The purpose of those increases was to lower the level of the Cahora Bassa lake so that it would be better able to store water flowing in from Zambia and Zimbabwe in January-March, usually the critical period in the rainy season.As a result, in late December and early January the Zambezi was well above flood alert level on its entire length between Tete city and the Indian Ocean. But no rescue operations or evacuations were required, largely because most people who once lived in the flood prone areas of the lower and middle Zambezi Valley were moved to higher ground in the floods of 2007 and 2008.
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