Reservoirs Near Full Capacity
The reservoirs along Syria's Euphrates River have filled to more than 97 percent of capacity, the director general of the General Euphrates Dam Authority, Haitham Bakour, said in a statement carried by the Syrian Ministry of Energy on Saturday, 23 May 2026. The authority oversees the country's three main dams on the river.
Storage has risen by roughly three billion cubic meters since the start of the year, against a total system capacity of about 16 billion cubic meters. The fill reflects an unusually wet season together with sustained inflows along the river.
Discharges to Be Raised
Outflow through the Kadiran Dam will rise in the coming days from around 500 cubic meters per second to about 800 cubic meters per second, the dam authority said. The increase is intended to manage levels in the reservoirs and to keep electricity output steady; normal generation across the dam system runs at 150 to 200 megawatt-hours.
Camp Evacuated in Jarabulus
Downstream, Syrian Civil Defense teams evacuated six families from a camp on the edge of Jarabulus, in the eastern Aleppo countryside, after Euphrates water surrounded their tents. The surge followed the opening of dams across the Turkish border, which sharply increased flows along the river.
The director of the Civil Defense center in Jarabulus, Abdel Jabbar Al-Jumaa, said teams moved the affected families to safer ground after water reached the tents. Crews remained on standby for further evacuations if upstream discharges from Kadiran pushed levels higher.
Pressure on Aging Infrastructure
The rise in flows is also testing barriers along the river. A water barrier near the Al-Sihha site, which collapsed in March from an initial breach of about one meter, has since widened to roughly five meters as water pressure increased.
Balancing Power and Flood Risk
Dam operators are navigating between two priorities: keeping reservoir levels safe and preserving the hydroelectric output the Euphrates dams supply to the national grid. With reservoirs near the operational ceiling and upstream releases continuing, the room for maneuver is narrowing.