1 April 2010

The Attabad lake level, and new seepage points

Posted by Dave Petley

The lake level at Attabad continues to rise at a rate of about 35 cm per day. The Pamir Times website has a Youtube video that contains pictures of the latest situation of the site. Whilst it is not in English, the images give a good overview of the current state of play:

From the video I have captured the following image of the state of the water level in the lake. I have then compared it with a photo that I took from a very similar location a month ago. I have circled the large boulder in red to allow comparison between the images. As usual this should be clearer if you click on the image:

Meanwhile the local monitoring team organised by Focus Humanitarian Assistance reports that another seepage point has started on the downstream face of the dam. This means that there are now three points, together releasing about 20 cubic feet per second (just over 0.5 cumecs) of water. Although the overall rate of seepage is not increasing substantively at the moment, this development of flow through the dam is a source of concern that needs to be monitored very carefully.