EXPLAINER: What you need to know about the Seven Forks Dam

 

With the ongoing heavy rains which have resulted in water overflows in areas with poor drainage systems, there are a lot of talks around dams.

Much of these talks revolve around the dams overflowing.

Today, however, we will only focus on understanding the Seven Forks Dam.

For decades, the Seven Forks Dams located in the lower Tana region of the Eastern part of Kenya have been known for power generation by Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), which also manages them.

However, they are also credited with playing a key role in mitigating flooding downstream during extremely rainy seasons, like all other Dams.

The Dams are located in the following sites; Masinga, Kamburu, Gitaru Kindaruma and Kiambere, to tap most of the potential of the Tana River. Each of the five has a Power Station.

How they mitigate flooding

The dams were built to regulate floods downstream in that once one is filled, the excess water flows through the Tana River to the next dam until the five of them are filled.

The 7 Forks water catchment areas include Rivers Sagana, Mathioya, Maragua, Thika and Chania which converge in Murang'a to form River Tana.

The first Dam is Masinga, Kamburu is the second, Gitaru is the third, Kindaruma is the fourth and Kiambere is the last.

Masinga has a capacity of 1.56 billion cubic meters, Kamburu (150 million cubic metres), Gitaru (20 million cubic metres), Kindaruma (12 million cubic metres) and Kiambere (585 million cubic metres).

Masinga's reservoir occupies a surface area of 120 km2.

The Dam got the name 7 Forks from the seven tributaries that the river splits into, between Gitaru and Kindaruma Dams.

Of the five dams, Kindaruma is the oldest, having been built in 1968 and can produce 72MW of power.

Kamburu which was commissioned in 1974 generates up to 94MW of power, Masinga was commissioned in 1981 and generates 40MW of electric power while Kiambere dam was commissioned in 1988 with an installed capacity of 168MW.

Gitaru which was built in 1978 generates 225MW of power.

BY THE STAR