VRA to increase Akosombo, Kpong Dams Spill.
The Volta River Authority (VRA) has said that it will let more water out of the Akosombo and Kpong electrical dams because the water level upstream of Akosombo Dam keeps going up.
The VRA, which is in charge of managing the dams, has sent out a statement through its Corporate Affairs and External Relations Unit to let the public know that it is working with important stakeholders to educate communities downriver so that the spillage has as little of an effect as possible.
The VRA has also said that it will keep an eye on the situation and give the people regular updates.
People living downriver are worried because the Akosombo and Kpong dams are still letting water out, and they are being told to take the appropriate precautions.
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The Akosombo Dam, which is also called the Volta Dam, is a hydroelectric dam on the Volta River in southeastern Ghana in the Akosombo valley. It is part of the Volta River Authority. Part of the Volta River Basin was flooded when the dam was built. This led to the building of Lake Volta.
Lake Volta has more surface area than any other man-made lake in the world. It takes up 8,502 square kilometers, which is 3,283 square miles. This is 3.6% of the land size of Ghana. Lake Volta is the third largest man-made lake in the world by volume, with 148 cubic kilometers of water. Lake Kariba is the biggest, with 185 cubic kilometers of water.[2]
The main reason for building the Akosombo Dam was to power the aluminum industry. People said that the Akosombo Dam was “the largest single investment in Ghana’s plans for economic growth.” The dam is important because it provides most of Togo and Benin’s energy. However, the Adjarala Dam, which is being built on Togo’s Mono River, is meant to make these countries less reliant on imported electricity. The dam’s original power output was 912 megawatts (1,223,000 hp). In 2006, a project to improve the dam’s power output brought it up to 1,020 megawatts (1,370,000 hp).
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Many people had to move because of the flooding that made the Lake Volta reservoir. The floods also had a big effect on the local environment, including earthquakes that caused coastal erosion and changes in the hydrology that led to less rain and higher temperatures. The soil around the lake is less fertile than the soil under it, and heavy agricultural use has led to the use of fertilizers.
This has led to eutrophication, which has caused, among other things, the rapid growth of an invasive weed that makes it hard to move around on the water and provides a home for the insects that spread diseases like bilharzia, river blindness, and malaria. Resettling the people who had to leave their homes was hard, and in some cases it didn’t work. Traditional farming methods died out, and hunger got worse.
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