ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: The Senate's technical committee on water resources is reported to have observed in its report that the Skardu-Katzara dam is the only viable option owing to lack of consensus on other big dams, like Kalabagh and Bhasha, it is learnt.

Informed sources told Dawn that the report is named after ANG Abbasi who will submit it before the Senate, but it will include diverging views of all members of the committee.

The report, the sources said, had sought reactivation of the Council of Common Interest (CCI), which is the only constitutional forum to decide inter-provincial disputes, and whose absence had politicised and made major water-storage projects controversial.

The sources said that the committee, in the report, had admitted that it had not been able to forge consensus on prioritizing the future dams, total water availability, distribution of water among the provinces, operations of link canals and filling criteria for dams. All these issues, the report says, can be resolved at the CCI level.

The committee, sources said, has held that notwithstanding some defence considerations, the Skardu dam, with 35 million acre feet (maf) storage capacity, can best store the water of "supper-flood" which traditionally comes once in a decade and that could be conserved by no other dam including Kalabagh and Bhasha.

It could irrigate, primarily through gravity flow, the whole of Pakistan, including Balochistan, Thar and Cholistan deserts, and its construction would amount to implementation of 90 per cent of the 1991 Water Accord and help eradicate poverty in vast parts of the country. However, it would submerge whole of Skardu and a lot of underground and surface defence facilities, the report has added.

Although the project is a part of Wapda's vision-2025, its construction and resettlement cost is yet to be ascertained. A study on its technical details and merits and demerits is likely to be available by the end of 2005. Skardu dam would have a long storage life of about 1,000 years.

On the other hand, Kalabagh dam would have a storage capacity of 6.1maf and a power generation capacity of 3,600mw. Its feasibility study and design are complete.

The Bhasha dam would have a storage capacity of 7.3maf and power generation capacity of 4,500mw. Both Kalabagh and Bhasha, with storage capacity between 6maf and 7maf, could cater for carry-over needs for one year only and not the once-in-a-decade supper floods, the report, according to sources, says.

They said Mr Abbasi had been under pressure from some intelligence agencies and he had recently brought this to the notice of President General Pervez Musharraf. The president, the sources said, had asked Mr Abbasi to complete his professional job without any pressure or fear.

The sources said the president had recently told a group of Pakistan Muslim League legislators that he had gathered, from his own sources, that Kalabagh dam had the support of seven members of the nine-member Senate's committee on water resources.

One of these parliamentarians, requesting anonymity, told Dawn that the president could attach top priority to Kalabagh dam, followed by Bhasha dam, on the basis of majority vote in the technical committee and supported by the Senator Nisar Memon-led parliamentary committee on water resources. The two reports would also be presented before the parliament for debate, he said.

The final report of the Senate's committee would also mention a Pakistan Meteorological Department report which predicts fast depletion of Himalayan glaciers in the next 25 years and suggests construction of a big dam that could be used as a long-term carry over dam with a capacity to feed agriculture for a longer period.