The State Weather Service is warning that water levels in the Nistru River will be rising through next Wednesday from Naslavcea village, where the river enters Moldova, all the way downstream to the Dubăsari Dam. The warning comes after the Ukrainian authorities decided to increase the outflow of the Novodnestrovsk Reservoir a few kilometers upstream to 1,100 cubic meters per second, or cumecs, in response to heavy rainfall in the Carpathian Mountains.
Radu Cazacu, deputy director of the Moldovan Water Resources Agency, has told IPN this is an increase from the standard 700 cumecs. As a result, Nistru levels downstream will rise by a vertical meter and a half from the usual. But there is no risk of floods, assures Cazacu, as protection dams are design to resist up to 2,600 cumecs.
Still, two ferry crossings on the Nistru in Northern Moldova, Cosăuți-Yampol and Soroca-Tsekinovka, were forced to close this morning due to high water levels.
Meanwhile on the Prut River, Moldova’s second largest river which also originates in the Carpathians, water from the Costești-Stânca impoundment is discharged at 400 cumecs, far from the critical 1,000 cumec mark.
