Pakistan has the world’s largest reservoir dam site with the storage capacity up to 35maf at Katzarah on the Indus about 18km downstream of Skardu, but Wapda seems to be unaware of it. Therefore, Wapda did not include the site in the 25-year vision plan for water development in spite of its extreme urgency.
The whole of Water Accord, specifically its basic and central paras 2,4,6,12 and 14 (e) directly provide for storage but that is ignored in the Vision 2025.
Wapda has rather put the “cart before the horse” in building 10-dry canals, technically called the flood canals meant to run only for 70 flood days in a year. These canals have an aggregate designed discharge of 33,650 cusses or 24maf equal to 6 times the live storage of Bhasha dam. The flood canals without storage are like guns without ammunition. These are to the disadvantage of agricultural development due to the short-flow duration.
Moreover, these inundation of flood canals will be a source of perpetual disputes between the provinces, as farmers will demand to run these for longer periods. If canals are to be built for agriculture, they must be perennial to be profitable and economical and be in accordance with para 4 of the Water Accord, wherein flood supplies and future storage is to be distributed in the prescribed ratio. Presently, these flood canals are planned at random and have been used as a political tool. The myopic Vision 2025 has forgotten large dams after Tarbela in 1974. It means large dams are being ignored for 53 years.
The reason behind building 70 days, short-run flood canals appears to be the political appeasement of Punjab and Sindh in lieu of the demand for the controversial Kalabagh dam by Punjab and its bitter opposition by Sindh. Punjab got Thal canal with a discharge of 8,500 cusecs. Sindh got Raine canal with a discharge of 6,000 cusecs, besides Sehwan barrage complex with six canals and Thar canal with total discharge of 14,000 cusecs. As a gesture of generosity, Balochistan got mutilated Kachi canal with a discharge of 5,150 cusecs to irrigate small part of Kachi plain though the whole could be irrigated if the barrage headwork is shifted to Chashma barrage or to a new barrage below it.
Large storage is avoided in spite of the wastage of about 35maf of floodwater to sea each year, the rapid silting of Tarbela and Mangla and the acute scarcity of water and hydro-power. Lack of storage dam for the last 28 years has resulted in water dispute, the induction of the IPP, the unbearable electricity charges, the setback to agriculture, industry and economy, besides aggravating the poverty. As a consequence of this, the general public is at the verge of revolt or suicide and the agrarian-based economy, collapsing. The new water and power minister has come to rescue. He assessed the situation and declared to solve these pending problems.
It would be necessary to revise the Vision-2025 programme first by giving top priority to large storage dams, instead of the 10 useless flood canals meant to run for 70 flood days only. Moreover, there is no need for obtaining consensus from the provinces for investigating and building new storage dams as the provinces have already committed by admitting and recognizing in para 6 to build storage dams “where ever feasible”. Therefore, feasibility is the only condition under the water accord and the Irsa Act to build storage dams. Basically, feasibility of storage dam on the Indus includes large reservoir long-life and excellent service value by having good capacity-inflow ratio, besides the structural feasibility.
Unfortunately, there is no good dam site on the Indus between Tarbela and Katzarah with large storage, long-life and good service value due to poor capacity-inflow ratio so as to meet our essential water requirements. Among all the poor dam sites on the Indus, Basha is the best. Against the less favourable storage sites, water requirements are great as para 2 of the Water Accord has already allocated 14.35maf of water in advance to the provinces that requires to be made available on priority basis. Moreover, the leaching requirement for drainage in para 12 is estimated to be about 5maf. The gross storage capacity lost due to the silting of Tarbela and Mangla is another 6maf. The storage to be lost in future due to silting till a new dam is build is in addition. Besides, the above water requirements of 25.35maf, the perennial water requirements of the 10 flood canals is another 24maf. Now questions arise:
1. Why large dams are not provided in Vision 2025 to meet the above requirements and remove scarcity of water?
2. What is the urgency to give priority to the worthless ten 70 days run flood canals over the badly needed storage dams?
3. Why did the ‘national water policy’ is not framed?
4. Why was the failure of tube-wells-based Scarps and the wrongly planned NDP not investigated for wastage of hundreds of billions of rupees?
5. Why the reclamation of 15 million acres of waterlogged and saline land is not included for tile drainage in Vision 2025 after the failure of Scarps and the NDP?
6. Why Katzarah dam site was not investigated along with Kalabagh as an alternate site? 7. Why in the terms of reference of the Kalabagh consultants, the dam site was specifically pre-fixed at Kalabagh by Wapda ignoring all dam sites on the Indus?
8. Why a thermal power station of 1000MW was provided at the Kalabagh dam site in support of its hydro- power generation?
9. Is it not surprising that Wapda has ignored the storage based Water Accord in respect of large dams?
10. Why non-professionals are appointed against professional posts in violation of the PEC Act? They are the policy and decision-makers and heads of the engineering departments in federal and provincial governments, therefore, they are responsible for creating the woes of water and power.
11. Why not bifurcate water wing from Wapda for efficient working to develop water resources as power generation from coal, oil etc., has no link with water?
12. Why the ‘integrated comprehensive water management is not included in Vision 2025 to reduce the seepage losses of 52maf from the canal system?
Nature is kind to have gifted Pakistan a ‘three gorges dam’ at Katzarah on the Indus with the largest storage reservoir in the world. The dam site is located on the downstream of the confluence of Shiok, Shigar and Indus rivers to store 35maf of water. It has 7 times the storage capacity of Basha dam. It will generate up to 15,000MW of hydro-power. The Katzarah reservoir will have a lifespan of about 1,000 years due to the excellent capacity-inflow ratio and normal silt flow.
Katzarah will completely control floods, regulate the Indus river flow essentially required for optimum generation of power by the Ghazi Barotha power channel, specially during the minimum flow season in winter months when the Indus discharge is as low as 10,000 cusecs against the required discharge of 60,000 cusecs for the GBPC. It will regulate the flow for the Indus Basin irrigation system to supply water as and when needed. Katzarah will serve as the development dam to alleviate poverty and bring under irrigation about 10 million acres of barren lands in the four provinces. This will provide jobs, boost the economy and help develop agriculture and industries. Katzarah will serve as a carry-over dam to safeguard against drought and famine. It will serve as the inter-seasonal dam to remove the shortage of water in winter. Katzarah will also serve as the replacement storage for the silting of Tarbela and Mangla. It will help channelize the 14 miles wide Indus River bed and reclaim about 6 million acres of river-bed for cultivation, besides saving a major portion of 14 maf of water losses in the Indus River bed. Pakistan has greatly harmed itself by ignoring a unique dam and continues to suffer from the scarcity of water and hydropower. In short, the storage dam is directly linked to poverty alleviation.
For the above multipurpose benefits of storage dams, former Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru called large dams “the temples of modern India” in 1950s. India, therefore, built 3,600 large, medium, and small dams. The World Commission on Dams has reported that India has the largest number of large dams under construction in the world. Indian engineers are now planning to link up rivers across the country as sites available for building large dams are exhausted. Bhakra dam transformed food deficient India in 1950s to one with a food surplus.
Contrary to this, the 28-year old controversy and ‘status quo’ for the short-lived mid-level sluicing Kalabagh dam has not yet ended. This is why no large dam is provided in the Vision 2025. Moreover, no notice was taken of Irsa’s decision, wherein Kalabagh dam was rejected by it on 22-10-1996 with 4:I majority due to the hydraulic design deficiencies of mid-level sluicing, its inability to sluice silt due to poor velocity flow and diversion of the 60,000 cusecs almost free of silt to the GBPC. These deficiencies will cause rapid silting of the 3.5maf reservoir component of the Kalabagh dam at Attock due to its poorest capacity-inflow ratio. This will result in short life span, poor service value and flooding of the Peshawar valley. In view of para 6 of the Water Accord, the Kalabagh dam is not feasible due to said reasons and therefore, Irsa rejected it.
Furthermore, it is very alarming to note that the actual remaining useful life of Tarbela is less than 25 years. To overcome poor dam sites and their poor capacity-inflow ratio on the Indus causing rapid silting, short life and poor service value, a new design for non-silting storage structure is conceived by this writer.It will be discussed separately.
