LAHORE, June 18: All rivers hit their normal kharif base flow on Wednesday after five years.

Water planners expect to receive 4 per cent more water during the season than the earlier calculated 2 per cent shortage.

The Indus River System Authority (Irsa) has convened a meeting on June 26 to review the emerging water situation. The authority expects to receive 75 million acre feet water instead of 72maf which it calculated at the beginning of the kharif season.

The combined river flow on Wednesday went up to 419,000 cusecs against the total indent of 295,000 cusecs placed by provinces.

Sindh had asked for 170,000, the Punjab 110,000, the NWFP 5,000 and Balochistan 10,000 cusecs. But the supply surpassed the demand by at least 124,600 cusecs. Even if the system losses of 20 per cent were included, the country was still having over 80,000 cusecs of surplus water.

The Irsa has to release more water to keep capacity for flood absorption otherwise dam filling should not be a problem given the magnitude of water available now.

“The authority has been filling the dam according to a plan and keeping them empty to meet any flood eventuality, otherwise they can now be filled very quickly,” says an Irsa official.

At present, the Punjab is contributing around 50,000 cusecs for Sindh below Panjnad because it had surplus water. The River Chenab has been a healthy flow of 73,000 cusecs and contributing to water richness of the country, so is the River Kabul with 68,400 cusecs, he said.

The Irsa has asked the provinces to run their canals as full capacity and they can get as much water as they wanted to, he said, and added: “By the end of the month, some water might start going down stream Kotri, meeting long-standing demand of Sindh for the same.”

The Tarbela lake level stood at 1448.94 feet against the dead level of 1,369 and optimum level of 1,550 on Wednesday. It contained 2.208maf water against total capacity of 7.2maf.

The Mangla Dam level reached 1186.70feet against the minimum level of 1040 and optimum 1202 feet. It had 3.734maf of water against total storage of 4.64maf.

The current wet spell which caused country-wide rains might have further improved the situation and suppressed the demand, says an official of the Punjab Irrigation Department.

The meteorological office has predicted isolated showers in Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Lahore divisions. All these factors combined could further improve supply and suppress demand of water, he said.