KARACHI: 10mgd water from Hub disappears on the way
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, March 5: The disappearance of 10 million gallons of water daily between the Hub dam reservoir and the Hub pumping station has become a mystery.
Wapda officials, manning the reservoir, claim that 25 mgd was being released to Karachi, whereas senior officials of the city government’s water and sanitation department assert they had been receiving only 15 mgd at the Hub pumping station, situated about 30.5 kms away from the dam’s reservoir.
Even 15 mgd which the city started getting on Tuesday will not be supplied to the city as around three mgd is wasted either owing to evaporation or seepages in the 19-mile long open conveyance system, called the Hub canal.
When the Wapda’s project resident engineer, Mohammad Inamullah Khan, was asked about the method with which they measure the quantity of water, he said on the one hand the canal is marked and, on the other, the sluice gate has a powered-gadget with which the quantity of water being released is measured. The gadget can also be operated manually, he added.
He was of the view that the controversy over the difference in the quantity of water being released by Wapda through the sluice gate and being received by the water and sanitation department at the pumping station could be resolved amicably by installing a hydrological equipment, called ‘current meter’ at the reservoir’s sluice gate and the Hub pumping station.
However, the water and sanitation department’s deputy managing director, Suleman Chandio, said as a matter of fact, the exact quantity of water being released from the sluice gate cannot be measured as, at present, there is an uncontrolled flow of water.
In support of his contention, he said no one can properly measure the quantity of water being released from the dam as the level of water in dam’s reservoir was still below 285 feet and hence there was no control over the flow of water.
About the method being used for knowing the quantity of water being received at the pumping station, Mr Chandio said though the water to the city was released at 8am on Tuesday, only one pump of 12.5 mgd has been used for filling the pumping station’s reservoir by 11pm on Wednesday.
“In fact, it is the capacity of a number of pumps installed at the pumping station that tell us how much water they are pumping,” he said, adding the device the dam’s sluice gate must be an outdated one as the dam was commissioned 23 years back.
He said currently the pumping station’s reservoir was being filled and pumping to the localities hooked to the Hub source would be released on Thursday on an “experimental” basis through two different pipelines — one of 48-inch dia and another of 66-inch dia.
The real impact of the supply being received from the Hub source would be known in a couple of days as, at present, some quantity of water was being seeped into the canal which had remained dry since Oct 16 last when the supply from Hub source came to an end.
Some independent sources are of the view that a considerable quantity of water is wasted while passing through the Hub canal that has developed cracks at different places as well as due to evaporation.
The actual length of the canal is 19 miles, but except for its 5.6 mile portion which is with the Wapda, the remaining 14-mile canal which was handed to the Sindh government in 2000 was not being properly maintained.
Iinsiders claim that the officials of the defunct KWSB on the one hand had refused to absorb over 25 ‘Beldars’ of Wapda who were performing duties of vigilance of the canal and, on the other, it has not deputed enough staff for keeping an eye on the people who might be using the canal’s water for the adjacent agricultural fields or might be selling water.
They are of the view that since the canal is open, there was a dire need for keeping a strict vigil on saboteurs who might pollute the canal’s water.
