Madaba’s Waleh Dam reaches full capacity — ministry

AMMAN — The Waleh Dam in Madaba has attained its full capacity of 8.1 million cubic metres (mcm), the Ministry of Water and Irrigation said on Monday.

The ministry’s spokesperson, Omar Salameh, said that a “slight” flood of 2 cubic metres per second occurred after the dam had reached its maximum capacity, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Salameh added that work is underway to expand the dam’s reservoir capacity to 25mcm by 2020, according to Petra. 

The walls of the Waleh Dam will be raised by 15 metres to allow the storage of additional rainwater, according to the ministry, which indicated in a previous statement that millions of cubic metres of water are wasted in
uncollected run-off almost every winter when the dam reaches its full capacity and then overflows.

Over 7mcm of water flowed into the Kingdom’s dams after the recent rainfall, according to the ministry’s recent figures.

By Saturday morning, the country’s 14 main dams were 35.5 per cent full, holding 120mcm of water, the official figures showed. These 14 dams have a capacity of 336mcm of water.