THIS refers to the article ‘Don’t hold back the waters’ (May 19) which talked about the current water issues and the impact of dams. While the water shortage crisis is upon us, the dams under construction will take years to complete.

With every passing year the water situation is going to get worse. We need a solution and we need it fast. Pakistan loses about 12.5 million acre feet (MAF) of water through thousands of watercourses every year. The water which seeps can be put to use only if the underground water is sweet. Wherever the subsoil water is saline, it is lost forever. We have a fairly large cultivated area where water is saline.

A typical watercourse is about 3-4 feet wide and two feet deep. Due to it loose soil bed, wild grass and trees grow over time, reducing the width of the watercourse. Owing to the reduction of the width and the depth, the water overflows and it does not reach the tail end. During travel, a fair amount of water gets wasted, too. The best part is that watercourses are used intermittently and they can be converted during the periods of relative lull.

The quickest and the easiest way to prevent losses from watercourses is to replace them with PVC pipes. We have close to 1,000 PVC pipe-making factories across the length and breadth of Pakistan. PVC raw material, which is used for making PVC pipes, is produced locally.

Piped watercourses can have several advantages. There will be zero water losses from them and 100 per cent of the water will reach the tail end.

The internal size of the pipe will never get reduced as there is no chance of grass, weeds and trees growing inside. Besides, the possibility of water theft will be completely eliminated. The entire country’s watercourses can be converted to piped watercourses within a year

This way we can save 12.5MAF water every year starting 2023 till eternity. This 12.5 MAF water, hold your breath, is the equivalent of twice the amount of water storage capacity of Tarbela dam.

Let us hold back the water, especially the 12.5 MAF discussed above, from getting lost. This may surely save our skin.

S. Nayyar Iqbal Raza
Karachi

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2022