It is highly astonishing that the Water Vision-2025 projects prepared by Wapda mostly consists of ten major flood canals for political appeasement of the provinces. This is perhaps a clever move to ultimately build Kalabagh dam already rejected by Irsa on October 22, 1996 on grounds of hydraulic deficiencies to cause rapid silting and short-life span of its 3.5 maf direct reservoir at Attock.
The building of Kalabagh dam is openly confirmed by the chairman Wapda on 4th July 2002 stating that, “the country needed urgent construction of the Kalabagh dam.” In the mean time, construction of the Greater Thal flood canal is taken in hand to compensate for the delay of Kalabagh dam and to redeem this, Sindh is given seven canals and Baluchistan one. The politically initiated flood canals provided in the Vision-2025 would supply water to Punjab, Sindh and Baluchistan only for a period of 2 1/2 months a year. During such short period no major crop — wheat, rice, cotton and other grains — can be sown to maturity.
Therefore, flood canals supposed to be provided for irrigated agriculture are of no good use at their huge cost. Without long-life mega storage dams the flood canals will be frustrating and would stay dry for about 9-1/2 months a year. Such flood canals are neither economically viable nor technically justified. The initiation of costly flood canals seems to be a political act and shows weakness for not taking in hand feasible storage projects to end the controversy and meet the shortage of water.
Besides the above weakness shown in water resources development, these canals with the location of their barrages are not planned to achieve optimum benefits and need shifting on the up stream. These need re-planning and drastic changes before their construction. Moreover, they must have perennial source of water supply to make them useful round the year for real agricultural development. It is, therefore, pre-requisite to immediately implement the storage based paras 2, 4, 6, 12 and 14 (e) of the Water Accord to build dams wherever feasible. The provinces and the federal government under the Irsa Act are legally bound to build storage dams to make available 117.35 maf of water as allocated in advance in para 2 of the Water Accord.
This is essentially required to meet the existing shortage of water and also meet the future needs. Due to rapid silting of Tarbela and Mangla reservoirs, the water shortage in future is going to be more serious and devastating. These reservoirs have collectively lost about 6maf of their gross storage capacity that includes dead storage. Therefore, first priority should have been given by Wapda to storage dams to meet the allocated figure of 117.35 maf of water in para 2 of the Water Accord as agreed by the provinces under the agreement. The Water Accord in its para 2 allocated in advance 117.35 maf of water against the actual average available flow of 103 maf. There is therefore inherent shortage of (117.35-103)=14.35 maf that needs immediate storage under para 4 and 6 of the Water Accord to make this quantity available. Otherwise it would cause delay of 40 years (2025+15) by the end of Vision-2025 and then build a dam that will take another 15 years to build to meet para 2 deficiencies of the Water Accord. The flood canals should, therefore, come after storage dams, as there is no sense to build them now.
The balance river supplies further need storage under para 4 of the Water Accord for flood canals over and above 117.35 maf of water that is already apportioned under para 2. The Water Accord clearly indicates the need for two types of storage. The one urgently needed under para 2 to make up the deficiency of advance allocation of 14.35 maf and the other in para 4 to store the balance river supplies beyond 117.35 maf for distribution in specified ratio. Under para 12 of the Water Accord, the requirements for drainage including LBOD will also be met out of the flood supplies in accordance with the agreed sharing formula. To leach saline soil, the drainage requirements including LBOD will at least be 5 maf of water for the Indus basin thought exact quantity of water is not specified in the Water Accord.
The distribution of flood supplies that is unforeseen and is variable each year may be dispute creating for Irsa. Therefore, its storage is prerequisite to substantiate water account for each of the flood canal, regulate floodwater and make distribution easy. Regarding flood canals there will always be attempts by the farmers to run these for longer period, as presently their use will only be confined to 16 per cent which is not profitable. In principles it is wrong to build inundation or flood canals at the cost of perennial canals ignoring all other projects of basic importance. Even otherwise, it is inevitable to first of all implement the “source projects” of storage dams, rather than give preference to build flood canals under political exigency. Storage dams will make more water available for the growing needs of agriculture. Similarly, there is urgent need to construct surface and subsurface tile drainage in the Indus basin to remove wide spread soil salinity from the root zone area of crops that have destroyed fertile land. After few years of leaching, the tile drainage effluent going to sea below Kotri will become clean, usable and quite big in quantity.
This can meet Sindh’s traditional demand for water below Kotri. Moreover, the large-scale dangerous use of saline-sodic drainage effluent must be avoided as that has added sodicity in soil and destroyed the root zone area of crops. There is also dire need for the modernization of the existing inefficient, wasteful and traditional canal irrigation system as that is incompatible to match crop water needs as and when required in proper dozes. At the same time it is necessary to raise water use efficiency from 35-40 to 60-65 per cent. The most important aspect of irrigated agriculture is to carry out integrated comprehensive water management (ICWM) to conserve all waste flows due to seepage from the canal irrigation system (about 52 maf) and flood water going waste to sea (about 35 maf). This is required by para 14 (e) of the Water Accord. It is a great blunder on the part of Wapda to ignore all the basic needs and water-related problems and instead provide flood canals in the Vision-2025. Wapda’s vision of flood canals is therefore not in consonance with the central paras 2, 6, 12 and 14 (e) of the Water Accord and the preamble of Irsa Act. It is surprising that even after 10 years, the Water Accord implementation has not been initiated by Wapda, the only executing agency in the country. Rather it has pushed it back by another 40 years (2025+15) due to politics of water. It is the duty of Irsa to request the President to arrange the implementation of Water Accord specially para 2, 4, 6 12 and 14 (e) in view of its para 13 in a planned manner. However, work on Gomal dam and Mirani Dam is highly appreciated in the context of paras 10 and 11 of the Water Accord.
Irsa must direct Wapda in the light of para 13 of the Water Accord to implement the preamble of Irsa Act and the central paras 2, 4, 6 12 and 14 (e) of the Water Accord on top priority basis under the patronage of the President Wapda is made ex-officio member of Irsa with no power to vote under section 4 (9) of the Irsa Act. Vision-2025 shows there is no coordination of Wapda with Irsa to develop water resources in the context of Water Accord, Irsa must seriously approach the government and insist that Vision-2025 programme must be in the context of Water Accord under Irsa’s direction. Wapda’s chairman never attended a single meeting with Irsa in ten years as required under section 4(9) of the Irsa Act. The need is that the President issues an executive order to all concerned, that is the federal ministries WAPDA and the governors of provinces to extent all sorts of cooperation to Irsa in implementing the Water Accord. Irsa’s directions must seriously be followed. The present situation of water use and its development indicate lack of coordination, mismanagement, confusion, indecisiveness and chaos.
The consequences of water politics between Sindh and Punjab, wrong planning, bad governance by non-professional policy and decision-makers as head of engineering departments and the dearth of capable water resources engineers have resulted in storage controversy for the past 28 years besides many other problems. The whole planning resulted in hysteric development. It is now estimated that by the end of Vision 2025 programme, the irrigated agriculture in the Indus basin will be ruined due to lack of sound planning shortage of water, lack of surface and sub-surface tile drainage to remove and control salinity from the root zone area of crops and due to lack of water management.
Moreover, the uncontrolled and indiscriminate use of 45 maf now increased upto 55maf of saline-sodic drainage effluent pumped by 575000 tube wells and used for irrigation as the major and an additional source of water has severely aggravated and complicated the salinity problem. Each year about 18000 new tube-wells are installed. Every year, about 160 million tons of injurious salts are added to the soil that circulates between the root zone of crops and the topsoil by private tube-wells — a legacy of SCARPs. Under the circumstances a great dilemma is created as the provision of sub-surface tile drainage to effectively evacuate and control salinity from the root zone area of crops on the one hand and on the other the injurious use of colossal drainage effluent pumped by tube-wells that circulates through the root zone of crops. These are highly incompatible with one another. Under such uncertain situation who will decide to stop the use of injurious drainage effluent is a big question? This malpractice of the blockage of drainage and its use is leading the Indus basin to a doom. The two-mega drainage projects of SCARPs and NDP very wrongly planned have miserably failed, thereby wasting billion of rupees without inquiry.
Surprisingly, the ministry of agriculture and the PARC are silent spectators and equally guilty for the problems of water use for agriculture, specially for not preventing the use of injurious drainage effluent containing more than 70 per cent saline-sodic water that destroys land. They never asked for specific infrastructures rightly needed to practice sustained irrigated agriculture and to provide its vital and basic components of sub-surface tile drainage, storage, demand based canal irrigation system and water management. They have totally ignored the basic input of “water” for agriculture and left it to engineers who are basically required to arrange its availability in canal system and not manage its use for agriculture nor the method of its disposal as that is the job of agricultural and soil scientists to advise engineers what type of specific structures are needed. For remaining mum, and not requesting engineers to provide relevant drainage, irrigation, storage and water management infrastructures, the Ministry of Agriculture and the PARC are also responsible. Unfortunately, there is no coordination between the ministries of agriculture and waster and power. Wapda must have Member Agriculture in the Authority, as “water” is the most basic input of agriculture.
Again, we have the facility of having full Ministry of Planning. Unfortunately, the deputy chief of the Planning Division and most of his staff are either non-professionals dealing with professional matters or professionals in lower grades with no field experience in water resources. this is why the Planning Division contributed nothing in the context of dozens of chronic, acute and complex problems of irrigated agriculture in the last 50 years. The administration dealing with water resources development in all ministries has deteriorated to the extent that no one is made answerable for the utter failure of mega projects of SCARPs and NDP, storage, drainage and water management projects that caused losses in billion of rupees, besides wasting 35 years of time and making the problems more complex and serious. This harmful aspect of planning and execution of mega projects in the presence of various ministries are not less damaging than the curse of corruption and misuse of power.
The chairman NRB and chairman PAC may kindly take notice of the working and usefulness or otherwise of these vital ministries. Surprisingly, no government took notice of the shameful failures of SCARPs and the NDP and could not end storage controversy for quarter of a century, as the President has no engineering consultants as his direct advisors. The government failure not to investigate and build Katzarab Dam that has six times the storage of Kalabagh is very surprising as well as intriguing. It appears either the government is ignorant of it or has another plan in mind. The engineering consultants as direct advisors to the President would have always informed the President of the true situation well in time for making sound decisions in national interest.
The National reconstruction Bureau has not yet examined the flawed administrative set-up of engineering organizations to know who plans and approves water resources projects, as head of engineering organizations and o whose behalf and that what is the water development policy and that what are the causes of above problems and of the failures of SCARPs and NDP. Whose responsibility is to set these right? What role WAPDA has to play in implementing Water Accord? What role the ministries of water, agriculture and planning division besides the provinces have in developing optimum water resources, create storage and implement Water Accord. The NRB may study how to improve professionalism and engineering management by competent water resources engineers and eliminate the role of non-professionals and avoid project failures, controversies and delays. The need arises to introduce engineering management service responsible for optimum and efficient development of water and hydropower resources.
One of the main reasons for casual and unskilled handling of water resources projects is the appointment of non-professionals as head of engineering organizations in violation of section 27 of the PEC Act 1976. They are the policy and decision making authorities. The other reason is that the President/Prime Minister never patronized water resources development. They merely depended on the briefings of charlatans who misguided them and also kept capable water resources engineers at a distance. Therefore all projects are dealt with by proxy and generally end in failure. We need the services of highly experienced water resources engineers who may have easy excess to the President to guide him on right lines. The building of unique dam like Katzarah on the Indus will go to the credit of the President who approves it. Hoover dam on Colorado River is an example as that is named after the US President.(The write is the chairman of Isra)