ZAMBEZI River Authority co-chairperson Partson Mbiriri says the water leakage on the face of Kariba dam wall is a result of worn out rubbers along the spillway gates.

For along time now, water has been leaking on the face of Kariba dam wall, with stakeholders in both Zambia and Zimbabwe questioning the strength of the dam wall.

But briefing the Zambia and Zimbabwe parliamentary energy committees that toured Kariba dam wall on Saturday, Mbiriri said the water leakage out of the dam wall had no consequence.

” For our purposes as the authority, we have been reassuring that Kariba dam wall is safe. But like any structure, we need to maintain it and we need to wade off any dangers and one of those of course is the project that is currently underway in terms of reshaping the plunge pool so that the dam wall is maintained and then attending to the gates, the six gates, two of which when you look on the downside of the wall, the face of the wall on the downside would appear to have water leaking out but essentially, that water is leaking out because of worn or torn rubbers along the side of the gates which can be replaced. So those leakages have no consequences. In any case, all the gates will be replaced with new infrastructure as it were and new rubbers so there will be no leakages,” said Mbiriri, who is also permanent secretary in the Ministry of Energy and Power Development in Zimbabwe.

And presenting a report on the water levels at Kariba Dam , Zambezi River Authority water resources and environmental director Christopher Chisense told the parliamentary energy committees that it will require three good rainy seasons to return to normal water levels.
“In 2017, we received good rainfall and what is important for you honorable MPs to note is that if we have three consecutive rainy seasons where the rainfall is above average, then we can go back to the normal level of the lake and on the average, that’s about 482 metres high and the storage will definitely be more than 20 billion cubic metres of water. So where we are as ZRA, we are trying to ensure that the storage that we have this year is building to a situation where we have 20 to 25 billion cubic metres of water as a storage,” said Chisense. “So For 2018, when you look at the rainfall projection for the two countries, Zambia and Zimbabwe, from the meteorological departments, which is backed by the information given by SADC weather pattern centre in Botswana, we are told that yes, the rainfall will be late for 2018 for the first three month’s but it will pick up with above normal or above average for the next three or four months. So using that as our consecutive approach in our meteorological calculation, we allocated consecutive amounts of 17 billion cubic litres for each power station to be used. This is the amount [17 billion cubic litres] of water for each power station (Kariba North and South Bank power stations) to be used for the whole year in 2018 and this will allow the power stations to raise generation level from 600 mega watts in 2017 to 900 mega watts in 2018 .”

The Zambezi River Authority had invited ten (10) members each from the energy parliamentary committees in Zambia and Zimbabwe to undertake a familiarisation tour of the Authority’s projects in the Batoka Gorge and the Kariba Dam.

The objective of the tour was to equip the Zambian and Zimbabwean members of parliament with first-hand information on the River Authority’s projects for their easy articulation in parliament.