Water rises in Himachal's Pong dam

The water level in Himachal Pradesh's Pong dam has risen alarmingly due to continuous rainfall in its catchment area since Monday, the dam authorities said Tuesday.

"The water level in the Pong dam stood at 1,375 feet Tuesday," an official of the Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) told IANS.

Pong dam, located 250 km from the state capital along the Punjab border, can store water up to 1,395 feet against the danger mark of 1,390 feet.

It meets the irrigation requirements of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

"This (Tuesday) evening, excess water was discharged through the spillways as a precautionary measure," a BBMB official said.

He said 30,000 cusecs is being discharged through spillways. A spillway is a structure used to provide the controlled release of flows from a dam or levee into a downstream area, typically being the river that was dammed.

A discharge of up to 50,000 cusecs is not treated as flooding the downstream, he said.

"We have already alerted the Punjab government as the discharge could affect villages and towns located downstream in the state," he added.

The spillways had earlier been opened Sep 14, 2010, the first time in 15 years when the water level had touched 1,394.25 feet.

One of the largest man-made wetlands in northern India, the Pong dam reservoir built on the Beas river in 1975 is spread over 41 km with a maximum width of 19 km.