Regimes of passage of high floods through the cascade of hydrostations on the Volga and Kama rivers

Conclusions

• 1. The experience of operating reservoirs and hydrostations on the Volga and Kama, particularly the 1979 experience, shows that the time has come to perform research and development works for estimating the conditions for passage of high floods past hydrostations of the Volga-Kama cascade. The purpose of these works should be to develop refined regulations for operating reservoirs of the cascade during high floods, for example, for a forecast of total inflow along the Volga and Kama of more than 200 km³, and also to assess the possibility of passage of high waters along the cascade under conditions of delivering the runoff of northern rivers to the Volga. The investigations should include a refinement of the parameters of the flood runoff of the Volga, Kama, and local inflow between hydrostations with consideration of hydrological observations of recent years. The calculations of the passage of floods of various probabilities should, in their turn, take into account both the refined characteristics of the flood inflow and the limitations of waste discharges related to the actual buildup of territories downstream of a number of hydrostations.

• 2. At the same time it is expedient to perform design studies to evaluate the permissibility of a more frequent increase of the upper pool level of individual hydrostations than was adopted in the projects and to establish the technical measures related to this, particularly those permitting an increase of their NPL.