Q Isa Daudpota February 5, 2006

Tags: Dams , Canals , Water Suppy , Khanpur Dam , Kalabagh , WAPDA , CDA , Maintenance , Infrastructure

If you can’t fix the small Khanpur Dam forget about Kalabagh and other big dams

href="/tag/Pervez Musharraf">Pervez Musharraf’s ’guarantees’ and his promises of fairness don’t hold water. Trust comes from seeing fair actions and not mere words.

To the current lack of trust between provinces, one must add the hurdles due to general mismanagement and incompetence. In matters such as water supply schemes, as in other large projects, this means enormous waste.

Take the case of Khanpur Dam reservoir whose location was chosen in the 1960s by a dictator — against technical advice — to provide water for Islamabad. He seemed more interested in submerging the ancestral home of a rival landlord that was located where the reservoir now stands! According to a Japanese report of year 2000, more than 14 million gallons of water seeps into the ground due to the wrong site selection. The loss is more than what Islamabad gets from the Simly Dam — the other major source of Islamabad’s water.

Arbitrary, wasteful decisions have continued to be made. In 1986, Japanese technical experts presented three alternatives to the ECNEC, the government’s top decision-making body, for conveying water from Khanpur to Rawalpindi and the capital.

Alternative 3, which involved the construction of a water tunnel through the Margalla was the cheapest. It also required significantly lower operating and maintenance costs. [This should not be confused with the tunnel proposed by the builders’ mafia last year.] It was strongly recommended by the JICA, the WAPDA and the CDA. Perversely, it was rejected in favour of Alternative 1, which requires lifting water by over 400 feet at a huge energy cost.

A politician from Rawalpindi, also a vocal member of the current government, sponsored a motion then in the puppet parliament and influenced ECNEC into choosing Alternative 1. This was on the flimsy pretext that this alternative required 20 percent less time to complete — five years instead of six.

"I strongly feel that this decision [to go with Alternative 1] is not technically sound and would affect not only the present inhabitants [in the 1980s] of the twin cities [Rawalpindi and Islamabad] but also future generations," protested Jan Nadir Khan, the CDA chairman, in April 1986 shortly after ECNEC’s decision.

He wrote to the finance minister and prime minister Muhammad Khan Junejo suggesting that if a change could be made "then Islamabad should be de-linked from the joint project with Rawalpindi and permitted to develop an independent short tunnel option [Margalla Tunnel] that has been under study."

Such strong words are not often associated with bureaucrats writing to their superiors, and indicate therefore the strength of feelings that ran against the plan at least in the CDA. Mr Khan’s three-year term of office ended on May 1986. His tenure was not extended.

It may be noted that a water tunnel still makes sense. It would not only save money but also end the need to bring water from the Indus and Jhelum rivers, which will entangle the Indus Rivers System Authority (ISRA), the inter-provincial water distribution commission, in further disputes.

The left bank canal from Kanpur Dam that was to provide 51 million gallons a day (MGD) to Rawalpindi and Islamabad can only manage 23 MGD although it opened as late as 2002. The canal also supplies water for agriculture to NWFP and Punjab and passes through a secret defence complex. At Khanpur Dam, its source, 236 MGD (440 cubic ft per second) water is released into the leaky canal threatened also by stone crushing operations all along its route that dump their debris into it.

It is important that the Joint Water Board (JWB), in charge of Khanpur Dam, form a strong inspection team (with reporting line to top government officials) that can regularly recommend and oversee maintenance of the dam as well as the canals. So far, the JWB seems to have been quite ineffective in matters related to the canal. It has failed, for example, to recover water charges from the users. The NWFP owes Rs 163 million, Punjab Rs 139 million and the CDA Rs 79 million. Rawalpindi does not pay for the water directly to Khanpur but is billed by the CDA.

It may be noted that ECNEC had planned to recover the capital cost of the dam (Rs 1.4 billion) by 2006 from user charges along with the operation and maintenance cost (Rs 10 million a year). To date the collection has come to only Rs 635 million — nearly Rs 800 million short. Since they are getting a lot less water on account of poor management than originally promised, the provinces have reneged on the maintenance of their part(s) of the 19-kilometre canal and refuse to pay the water bills!

So General Musharraf and his dam brigade shouting for large new dams ought to first begin showing that they can manage small dams, particularly those they themselves get water from. If they cannot even fix the management of a nearby small dam and canal what hope is there that they will take care of a distant Sindh’s interests?