Akosombo, Kpong dams spillage not an engineering failure - Ing. Ametefe

Hydrological engineer, Ing. Wise Ametefe, has squashed claims that the spillage of the Akosombo and Kpong dams was a result of engineering failure.

According to him, the unfortunate incident can be linked to the lack of coordination among agencies within the Volta Basin responsible for the smooth running of the dams.

Ing. Ametefe while speaking on Citi TV's The Point of View programme on Wednesday, October 18, 2023, stressed that what is happening is purely hydrological.

The former registrar of the Engineering Council said, “What is happening is not an engineering failure, it is a lack of coordination among agencies operating within the Volta Basin because information must be passed from one part to the other and the Volta River Authority happens to be at the receiving end of the whole Basin so whatever happens at the upstream part of the river affects us here. What is happening is purely hydrological.”

“I have a problem with the way the dam has been designed with respect to the height. The walls appear to be too high thereby trapping a lot of water. It could have been made lower. High means that even if there is a fault at Akosombo, the level at which the flood height will spread and the speed with which it will go will be bad for us. We could have had a lower dam and even this volume of water could have been stored in other downstream or upstream reservoirs,” he added.

The VRA commenced the controlled water spillage from the Akosombo and Kpong Dams on September 15, 2023, due to a consistent rise in the inflow pattern and water level of the Akosombo reservoir.

Several communities in the Volta region have been left flooded due to the spillage of excess water from the Akosombo dam by the Volta River Authority.

While the current inflow to the reservoir is pegged at 400,000 cubic feet of water per second, the authority says it is spilling just about 183,000 cubic feet of water.

They cannot ascertain when the spilling exercise will be over.

SA/KPE

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