It's not a matter of technical feasibility, but of "trust deficit" between federal government and Punjab, and other federating units. Punjab's opening Chashama Jehlum link canal during non-flood seasons have made Sindh very suspicious of Punjab's promises and policies.
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/24-Jan-2006/second-opinion-the-many-deficits-of-trust-in-south-asia-khaled-ahmed-s-tv-review
"INDUS NEWS (December 16, 2005) Hussain Haroon presented a very fluent case for Sindh against the Kalabagh Dam. He said because of MQM's opposition to the Dam the Sindhis were ready to pick up the flag of the MQM if the Sindhi parties did not rise to the defence of the Sindhi people's rights.
He said there was a trust deficit between Sindh and Punjab from the day Punjab took water illegally from Chashma barrage. The barrage was built with the proviso that Punjab would take water from it only during the flood season. But Punjab took it during normal flow and this was the water that belonged to Sindh.
He said today this practice could not be given up because a nuclear power plant had come up in Chashma and water belonging to Sindh had to be taken to keep the plant from heating up. As for the parliament in Islamabad, which the host called rubberstamp, Mr Haroon opined that all past parliaments were alike.
Hussain Haroon was most articulate in Urdu which should put most of our speakers to shame. He focused on the Punjabi weak point, the Chashma off-take of water in the non-flood season. Punjabis can be repentant but it is no use now because they have lost trust. Sindhis have now a new argument: there is no water, therefore, there should be no dams.
But there is a give in the Sindhi consensus. Some Sindhis allow Basha Dam even as they claim that there is no water to store. To an outsider this of course looks strange. Will an external arbiter at this stage do the trick? Some Sindhis demand it but if the crunch comes they will probably refuse. There is such lack of trust in the federation in Pakistan."
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/16-Jan-2013/view-courts-and-the-kalabagh-dam-arbab-daud
"The issue of the Kalabagh Dam originated in the early 1950s and at that time Dr Mohammad Nasir Gazdar, the Secretary General of the Environmental Society stated in his report named "An Assessment of the Kalabagh Dam Project on River Indus" that due to high level of risk the project of building a dam is rejected even by the American experts. An article by N Leroy Poff named as "Promising a rose garden but delivering dust" was published in 1990 that voiced the same concern...."
A number of international reports are available that denounces the design errors in the Kalabagh Dam. The issues that are raised include the issue that the nearby Salt Range will create problems. It will make the waters saline and that could damage the lands that are irrigated from the dam. Secondly, it is also reported that as the tectonic plates in the area are quite active, causing the Himalayan Mountains to rise a few millimetres every year, the phenomenon is bound to create instability in the area to a substantial degree. It has also been observed that large dams induce earthquakes. An online report by Iftikhar Ahmad named "Kalabagh Dam — Development or Disaster?" states: "The construction of the Kalabagh Dam at the proposed location is to play with the dangerous consequences of earthquakes, and putting the life of downstream inhabitants at stake.""
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/28-May-2008/editorial-goodbye-kalabagh-dam
"Punjab is still interested in the Kalabagh Dam, and experts inside Pakistan and at the World Bank support it when it says that the fears of the other provinces are not founded in fact. But the opponents don't want to hear any expert view. The Sindhi leader Rasul Baksh Paleejo brings his cartload of "research material" to prove that the dam is harmful whenever he is invited to a TV programme to discuss the subject. Also, the world outside is increasingly wary of large dams because of the ecological damage they do to the environment and the suffering they impose on communities they displace. In India, for example, where big dams are planned, civil society movements are afoot to oppose them.
The verdict is that dams, while they produce cheap electricity and store water for irrigation, tend to silt up and become useless with the passage of time. Today all the big dams in Pakistan including Tarbela and Mangla are silted up by 30 percent, and the Mangla wall is to be raised to make it useful for a few more years. The Kalabagh Dam was proposed to be built on the Indus 15 miles north of Kalabagh in Punjab with a height of 260 feet and a length of 11,000 feet with a storage capacity of 6.1 MAF. It was to generate 11,750 kilowatt-hours of cheap electricity and irrigate 2.4 million additional acres. Its cost in 2000 was $10 billion. It was to take 10 to 15 years in construction.
Pakistan is externally under embargo for building nuclear power plants because it didn't sign the NPT; now it is under a worse internal embargo on the building of dams. Last week, the nationalist Jiay Sindh party demonstrated in Sindh saying it would oppose even the Basha Dam which is not rejected by ANP so far. Basha is a long way off and will take much longer than the gas coming through in the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. But one can't blame people who support the Kalabagh Dam because Pakistan really has no way out of its energy crunch.
The political well-being of the federation stands in the way of any agreement on distribution of our waters. The Indus Basin Treaty between India and Pakistan of 1960 was possible only after Pakistan recognised that an absence of treaty would favour the upper riparian India. As separate states, Sindh and Punjab — like India and Pakistan — would have to have a waters treaty, inclusive of upriver dams, or Sindh would go dry. The NWFP would be forced to go into a treaty with Punjab because of the sheer inequality of power, like India and upper riparian Nepal. But as a federation, Pakistan must pay heed to the increasingly hostile anti-dam sentiment among the federating units."
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/18-Dec-2005/view-kalabagh-dam-what-is-to-be-done-dr-mubashir-hasan
"Few are aware that at the beginning of the 20th century the minimum quantity of water flowing to the sea below Hyderabad was between 70,000-100,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs). In summer it was more than a million cusecs. Nowadays not a drop is allowed below Kotri barrage for about nine months in an average year. The construction of canals by the British-Indian government and Pakistan has resulted in one of the great ecological disasters of the world."
"It is a pity that the people of the Punjab are not aware that the benefits that will accrue to them from Kalabagh dam will in no way be extraordinary. If other provinces are against the dam so should be Punjab in the greater national interest. By not constructing the dam Punjab shall lose no more than the others.
Third, Islamabad should initiate measures to restore the glory of the Indus. It should build at least three barrages, one at the mouth of the river and two between the Arabian Sea and Kotri. They should be two-way barrages, able to take water from the sea into the river and from the river into the sea. With the barrages we can regulate the water and salinity levels in the river as they existed at the beginning of the 20th century. We can also restore marine life to its condition a century ago. The glory of the lower Indus can thus be restored."
http://www.dawn.com/news/771633/kalabagh-the-other-view
"Do we produce enough electric power in Pakistan? No. Do we have enough water storage capacity? Well, it depends on 1) how we define ‘enough’; and 2) ‘where’ we want to store. Of all the available water in the Indus basin of Pakistan, approximately 95 per cent is directed to agriculture of which over 70 per cent goes waste; less than 30 per cent of it is the actual requirement for the crops we grow.
The fact is, besides wasting water, we also spend billions in managing wastage of water in the name of SCARP (Salinity Control and Reclamation Project). Rather than planning for more water — at the rate of 70 per cent wastage — we need to invest in increasing irrigation efficiency.
We can build a new dam to store water, or we can use an available storage space in the form of natural ‘aquifers’. Current knowledge of hydrogeology tells us that water storage is carried out better in aquifers than in dams.
If only we refill the depleted aquifers under the city of Lahore, we can store more water than the Tarbela reservoir — that too with the least social and environmental impact.
Rachna, Thal and Bari Doabs all offer excellent aquifers which could be exploited for storage, offering a potential storage capacity hundreds of times more than that of Tarbela, Mangla and Kalabagh combined. Although refilling an aquifer would be expensive, it would be much cheaper than building a large dam.
What about power? Do we need a dam for it? Let’s do some simple math here: the dam building might cost $10 billion with an estimated generation capacity of 5GW. This power, however, enters the grid only after completion of the dam which might take, say, 15 years.
With the prevailing technology of solar power, it costs approximately 90 cents to produce one watt. Given $10bn, we produce 10GW and production can start within the first few months of the project, progressively reaching 10GW in, say, two years.
So what is better — $10bn for 10GW in two years or $10bn for 5GW after 15 years plus the huge social and environmental impact?
Despite all this, why are there ‘experts’ who insist that we build the dam — a solution which we, as a poor country, neither have the financial muscle to embark on nor the technical expertise to undertake. Consequently, this ‘solution’ makes us dependent on foreign ‘help’, financially and technically. And we have to pay for this ‘help’ with interest.
When a mega project (like a large dam) is undertaken in a poor country with the ‘help’ of some global financiers, the latter are actually ‘investing’ in the poor country on behalf of a few (rich) ‘donors’.
The donor countries also share part of the project proportionate to their share of ‘donation’, thus creating jobs and businesses for their own citizens involved in that project. With this, their ‘donated’ capital comes back to re-circulate within their own economies, while the economy of the country being ‘helped’ hardly benefits.
Till the project is complete, the host country accumulates a huge debt, plus interest, without having earned anything. As soon as the project starts delivering, the host country is obliged to meet the loan repayment schedule.
The lending agencies yet again dictate the price of economic goods delivered by the project to match the repayment instalments. The host government returns the loan with interest by making its citizens pay a higher price (than the actual production cost) over a period of 30 years or so.
By the time loans are paid back the project has already lived its useful life and is in a state requiring major overhauls. For example, the lake behind a dam is silted and the power-generating infrastructure is in need of critical repairs and replacements.
This is usually the time when teams of ‘experts’ on behalf of the lending agencies start appearing on the scene yet again, ‘advising and warning’ the host government on the ‘next mega project’ which is deemed ‘absolutely necessary’ to fix the ‘critical’ problems they have identified, or else face doom.
Poor countries like us end up ‘raising the dykes of Mangla dam’ and then keep paying for the facility which they thought they had already paid for. Now we know who are the ‘experts’, where they come from, and why they ‘care’."
http://tns.thenews.com.pk/the-kalabagh-dam-obsession/#.VppD1_HFs1h
"Even the riverine flood of Indus cannot always be reined in by the proposed dam. Facts are blatantly distorted without realising that Kalabagh Dam is not designed as a flood control dam. A basic requirement of flood control dam is to keep it empty or allow sufficient allowance of storage during the flood season so that it could absorb incoming deluges. Kalabagh Dam is mainly designed for irrigation and power generation purposes which necessitate it to remain full up to the hilt in peak Kharif days.
Monsoon floods in Pakistan occur concurrently with the peak demand of Kharif season when crops need maximum water. According to the water apportionment accord both Punjab and Sindh need more than 100,000 cusecs every day during these months. In the first week of August, both Tarbela and Mangla Dams were only four and six feet respectively below their maximum conservation level.
In 2010 by the beginning of the last week of July, both dams were holding a massive 8.6 million acre feet water. Tarbela was at a level of 45 feet below its capacity holding 4.3 million acre feet (MAF) while Mangla was only 47 feet below its capacity holding 4.1 MAF of water. Data of both 2010 and 2015 shows that just days before the onslaught of peak floods, dam bodies were full of water. In other words any dam designed for irrigation purpose on Indus could not be left empty, partially or completely during monsoon days to meet the water requirement for Kharif crops.
Massive flows of Indus require a flood control dam that can be emptied by mid-July to absorb flood flows. This defeats the key premise for Kalabagh Dam professed to be the lynchpin of irrigation and power generation system of the country. Likewise peak monsoon months coincide with the peak demand of electricity that requires maintaining a certain reservoir level to generate maximum possible power. Pakistan meets approximately one-third of its electricity needs through hydel power.
Apart from irrigation, this is another reason requiring the dam belly to remain full of water. It is bizarre to expect that the proposed Kalabagh Dam would serve conflicting demands of flood control while synchronously catering to irrigation and electricity needs.
A grim fact is deliberately glossed over to hoodwink the public — excessive storage during floods actually makes the dam body highly susceptible to abnormal hydraulic pressure. Magnitude of floods in Pakistan is not benign by any reckoning.
Exposing the dam body to a swollen river has its own risks. Impact of super flood of 2010 on a dam body warrants deeper understanding.
In August 2010, Sukkur, Guddu and Kotri barrages braced a flow of over one million cusecs for nearly ten days. Any of the available dams including the proposed Kalabagh Dam would not have the capacity to absorb the mammoth flow. Instead, such a mighty flow would have made the dam structure vulnerable to burst at its seams, hence aggravating the catastrophic flood.
Coinciding with floods in Pakistan, China also faced an onslaught of floods in 2010. At one stage, hundreds of soldiers were deployed to avert a likely break-up of Wenquan reservoir that could have inundated Golmud city with a population of over 200,000 under four meters of deep water. In the same year, the north-east of Brazil, known for droughts, witnessed a deleterious flood killing 50 people and leaving 150,000 homeless. This devastation was mainly caused by the bursting of dams on two rivers. In March 2009, a dam bursting near Jakarta killed scores of people.
Likewise, damming has made drastic alterations in the natural flood plains of the Indus and the contracted trachea of the Indus is also a major cause for the increased intensity of floods.
Undeniably, Pakistan needs an effective flood management system including flood-control reservoirs. However, it requires solutions. Obsession with a contentious dam would not solve the problem. If a dam similar to Kalabagh could address the problem, the best option would be to construct a less controversial Bhasha Dam that is lying in cold storage of Wapda for several years. The dam has been cleared by Council of Common Interests and ECNEC. There are compelling reasons to implement the project forthwith.
The project was inaugurated by the then president Gen Musharraf in 2006. However the water bureaucracy has dumped the project under one or other pretext for a decade now. A lacklustre progress on Bhasha Dam testifies to malafide intentions of water bureaucracy that wants to keep the controversy of Kalabagh Dam alive. Bhasha dam offers no less storage and electricity than Kalabagh Dam, with an advantage of being politically innocuous.
More than 54 maf water drained to the sea in 2010. Had there been a Kalabagh Dam, it would have stored only 6 maf that would not have made any real impact on the ferocity of flood and the ensuing devastation. Only a large dam exclusively built for flood controlling purpose could have absorbed a significant amount of water. An example to this effect is Aswan Dam built on Nile river in 1960-70. The dam body has a capacity to store 107 maf. Before the dam, floods battered the area every year. In the subsequent years, Aswan dam brought considerable relief during floods as well as drought years.
Flood control dams are also referred to as dry dams. As against ordinary dams, dry dams have their discharge system on the riverbed. Dry dams store water only during floods, and are normally not submerged. Quantum of flood flows in Pakistan ideally requires a mega dry dam in the upper reaches of Indus.
The dicey behaviour of climate compounded by rapidly melting glaciers in Himalayas makes Indus an abode of super floods in the coming years. A potential option to sedate super floods is Katzarah Dam that has been kept under a tight lid by Wapda. Unanimously proposed by the inter-provincial and parliamentary commissions and the technical committee on water resources, the dam has the capacity to stash 35 million acre feet of water. Wapda has been rabidly opposing the project which could produce more than 15,000 megawatts of electricity.
In a letter to former prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, Wapda said: “The option of Skardu/Katzarah dam project for further planning has been dropped from Wapda’s Vision 2025.”
Wapda attributed over a dozen negative impacts which it said made the multi-purpose dam site unfeasible in the present circumstances. Limited physical access to area, possible submersion of Skardu and Shigar valleys, inundation of over 13,000 hectares of agriculture land, displacement of 223,847 people and loss of the strategic control of the Siachen and Kargil sectors and line of control were mentioned as major reasons for abandoning the project.
An avid protagonist of the dam, former chairman of IRSA Engr. Fateh Ullah Khan Gandapur, vehemently disapproves these excuses. In his opinion the dam would stem erosion and prolong the life span of downstream dams. Most of the objections attributed to Katzarah Dam are equally valid for any other dam including Kalabagh Dam. Wapda never brought this dam into public debate to identify solutions for the perceived problems attributed to the dam.
After wasting several decades in pursuit of Kalabagh Dam, it would be pertinent to explore politically non-incendiary and technically feasible options like Katzarah. Rather than mourning for Kalabagh Dam after every flood, it would be more apt to construct long overdue Bhasha Dam and give a serious consideration to Katzarah dam."
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/business/17-May-2002/kalabagh-dam-only-cure-for-pak-water-woes
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/24-Jan-2006/second-opinion-the-many-deficits-of-trust-in-south-asia-khaled-ahmed-s-tv-review
"INDUS NEWS (December 16, 2005) Hussain Haroon presented a very fluent case for Sindh against the Kalabagh Dam. He said because of MQM's opposition to the Dam the Sindhis were ready to pick up the flag of the MQM if the Sindhi parties did not rise to the defence of the Sindhi people's rights.
He said there was a trust deficit between Sindh and Punjab from the day Punjab took water illegally from Chashma barrage. The barrage was built with the proviso that Punjab would take water from it only during the flood season. But Punjab took it during normal flow and this was the water that belonged to Sindh.
He said today this practice could not be given up because a nuclear power plant had come up in Chashma and water belonging to Sindh had to be taken to keep the plant from heating up. As for the parliament in Islamabad, which the host called rubberstamp, Mr Haroon opined that all past parliaments were alike.
Hussain Haroon was most articulate in Urdu which should put most of our speakers to shame. He focused on the Punjabi weak point, the Chashma off-take of water in the non-flood season. Punjabis can be repentant but it is no use now because they have lost trust. Sindhis have now a new argument: there is no water, therefore, there should be no dams.
But there is a give in the Sindhi consensus. Some Sindhis allow Basha Dam even as they claim that there is no water to store. To an outsider this of course looks strange. Will an external arbiter at this stage do the trick? Some Sindhis demand it but if the crunch comes they will probably refuse. There is such lack of trust in the federation in Pakistan."
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/16-Jan-2013/view-courts-and-the-kalabagh-dam-arbab-daud
"The issue of the Kalabagh Dam originated in the early 1950s and at that time Dr Mohammad Nasir Gazdar, the Secretary General of the Environmental Society stated in his report named "An Assessment of the Kalabagh Dam Project on River Indus" that due to high level of risk the project of building a dam is rejected even by the American experts. An article by N Leroy Poff named as "Promising a rose garden but delivering dust" was published in 1990 that voiced the same concern...."
A number of international reports are available that denounces the design errors in the Kalabagh Dam. The issues that are raised include the issue that the nearby Salt Range will create problems. It will make the waters saline and that could damage the lands that are irrigated from the dam. Secondly, it is also reported that as the tectonic plates in the area are quite active, causing the Himalayan Mountains to rise a few millimetres every year, the phenomenon is bound to create instability in the area to a substantial degree. It has also been observed that large dams induce earthquakes. An online report by Iftikhar Ahmad named "Kalabagh Dam — Development or Disaster?" states: "The construction of the Kalabagh Dam at the proposed location is to play with the dangerous consequences of earthquakes, and putting the life of downstream inhabitants at stake.""
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/28-May-2008/editorial-goodbye-kalabagh-dam
"Punjab is still interested in the Kalabagh Dam, and experts inside Pakistan and at the World Bank support it when it says that the fears of the other provinces are not founded in fact. But the opponents don't want to hear any expert view. The Sindhi leader Rasul Baksh Paleejo brings his cartload of "research material" to prove that the dam is harmful whenever he is invited to a TV programme to discuss the subject. Also, the world outside is increasingly wary of large dams because of the ecological damage they do to the environment and the suffering they impose on communities they displace. In India, for example, where big dams are planned, civil society movements are afoot to oppose them.
The verdict is that dams, while they produce cheap electricity and store water for irrigation, tend to silt up and become useless with the passage of time. Today all the big dams in Pakistan including Tarbela and Mangla are silted up by 30 percent, and the Mangla wall is to be raised to make it useful for a few more years. The Kalabagh Dam was proposed to be built on the Indus 15 miles north of Kalabagh in Punjab with a height of 260 feet and a length of 11,000 feet with a storage capacity of 6.1 MAF. It was to generate 11,750 kilowatt-hours of cheap electricity and irrigate 2.4 million additional acres. Its cost in 2000 was $10 billion. It was to take 10 to 15 years in construction.
Pakistan is externally under embargo for building nuclear power plants because it didn't sign the NPT; now it is under a worse internal embargo on the building of dams. Last week, the nationalist Jiay Sindh party demonstrated in Sindh saying it would oppose even the Basha Dam which is not rejected by ANP so far. Basha is a long way off and will take much longer than the gas coming through in the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline. But one can't blame people who support the Kalabagh Dam because Pakistan really has no way out of its energy crunch.
The political well-being of the federation stands in the way of any agreement on distribution of our waters. The Indus Basin Treaty between India and Pakistan of 1960 was possible only after Pakistan recognised that an absence of treaty would favour the upper riparian India. As separate states, Sindh and Punjab — like India and Pakistan — would have to have a waters treaty, inclusive of upriver dams, or Sindh would go dry. The NWFP would be forced to go into a treaty with Punjab because of the sheer inequality of power, like India and upper riparian Nepal. But as a federation, Pakistan must pay heed to the increasingly hostile anti-dam sentiment among the federating units."
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/editorial/18-Dec-2005/view-kalabagh-dam-what-is-to-be-done-dr-mubashir-hasan
"Few are aware that at the beginning of the 20th century the minimum quantity of water flowing to the sea below Hyderabad was between 70,000-100,000 cubic feet per second (cusecs). In summer it was more than a million cusecs. Nowadays not a drop is allowed below Kotri barrage for about nine months in an average year. The construction of canals by the British-Indian government and Pakistan has resulted in one of the great ecological disasters of the world."
"It is a pity that the people of the Punjab are not aware that the benefits that will accrue to them from Kalabagh dam will in no way be extraordinary. If other provinces are against the dam so should be Punjab in the greater national interest. By not constructing the dam Punjab shall lose no more than the others.
Third, Islamabad should initiate measures to restore the glory of the Indus. It should build at least three barrages, one at the mouth of the river and two between the Arabian Sea and Kotri. They should be two-way barrages, able to take water from the sea into the river and from the river into the sea. With the barrages we can regulate the water and salinity levels in the river as they existed at the beginning of the 20th century. We can also restore marine life to its condition a century ago. The glory of the lower Indus can thus be restored."
http://www.dawn.com/news/771633/kalabagh-the-other-view
"Do we produce enough electric power in Pakistan? No. Do we have enough water storage capacity? Well, it depends on 1) how we define ‘enough’; and 2) ‘where’ we want to store. Of all the available water in the Indus basin of Pakistan, approximately 95 per cent is directed to agriculture of which over 70 per cent goes waste; less than 30 per cent of it is the actual requirement for the crops we grow.
The fact is, besides wasting water, we also spend billions in managing wastage of water in the name of SCARP (Salinity Control and Reclamation Project). Rather than planning for more water — at the rate of 70 per cent wastage — we need to invest in increasing irrigation efficiency.
We can build a new dam to store water, or we can use an available storage space in the form of natural ‘aquifers’. Current knowledge of hydrogeology tells us that water storage is carried out better in aquifers than in dams.
If only we refill the depleted aquifers under the city of Lahore, we can store more water than the Tarbela reservoir — that too with the least social and environmental impact.
Rachna, Thal and Bari Doabs all offer excellent aquifers which could be exploited for storage, offering a potential storage capacity hundreds of times more than that of Tarbela, Mangla and Kalabagh combined. Although refilling an aquifer would be expensive, it would be much cheaper than building a large dam.
What about power? Do we need a dam for it? Let’s do some simple math here: the dam building might cost $10 billion with an estimated generation capacity of 5GW. This power, however, enters the grid only after completion of the dam which might take, say, 15 years.
With the prevailing technology of solar power, it costs approximately 90 cents to produce one watt. Given $10bn, we produce 10GW and production can start within the first few months of the project, progressively reaching 10GW in, say, two years.
So what is better — $10bn for 10GW in two years or $10bn for 5GW after 15 years plus the huge social and environmental impact?
Despite all this, why are there ‘experts’ who insist that we build the dam — a solution which we, as a poor country, neither have the financial muscle to embark on nor the technical expertise to undertake. Consequently, this ‘solution’ makes us dependent on foreign ‘help’, financially and technically. And we have to pay for this ‘help’ with interest.
When a mega project (like a large dam) is undertaken in a poor country with the ‘help’ of some global financiers, the latter are actually ‘investing’ in the poor country on behalf of a few (rich) ‘donors’.
The donor countries also share part of the project proportionate to their share of ‘donation’, thus creating jobs and businesses for their own citizens involved in that project. With this, their ‘donated’ capital comes back to re-circulate within their own economies, while the economy of the country being ‘helped’ hardly benefits.
Till the project is complete, the host country accumulates a huge debt, plus interest, without having earned anything. As soon as the project starts delivering, the host country is obliged to meet the loan repayment schedule.
The lending agencies yet again dictate the price of economic goods delivered by the project to match the repayment instalments. The host government returns the loan with interest by making its citizens pay a higher price (than the actual production cost) over a period of 30 years or so.
By the time loans are paid back the project has already lived its useful life and is in a state requiring major overhauls. For example, the lake behind a dam is silted and the power-generating infrastructure is in need of critical repairs and replacements.
This is usually the time when teams of ‘experts’ on behalf of the lending agencies start appearing on the scene yet again, ‘advising and warning’ the host government on the ‘next mega project’ which is deemed ‘absolutely necessary’ to fix the ‘critical’ problems they have identified, or else face doom.
Poor countries like us end up ‘raising the dykes of Mangla dam’ and then keep paying for the facility which they thought they had already paid for. Now we know who are the ‘experts’, where they come from, and why they ‘care’."
http://tns.thenews.com.pk/the-kalabagh-dam-obsession/#.VppD1_HFs1h
"Even the riverine flood of Indus cannot always be reined in by the proposed dam. Facts are blatantly distorted without realising that Kalabagh Dam is not designed as a flood control dam. A basic requirement of flood control dam is to keep it empty or allow sufficient allowance of storage during the flood season so that it could absorb incoming deluges. Kalabagh Dam is mainly designed for irrigation and power generation purposes which necessitate it to remain full up to the hilt in peak Kharif days.
Monsoon floods in Pakistan occur concurrently with the peak demand of Kharif season when crops need maximum water. According to the water apportionment accord both Punjab and Sindh need more than 100,000 cusecs every day during these months. In the first week of August, both Tarbela and Mangla Dams were only four and six feet respectively below their maximum conservation level.
In 2010 by the beginning of the last week of July, both dams were holding a massive 8.6 million acre feet water. Tarbela was at a level of 45 feet below its capacity holding 4.3 million acre feet (MAF) while Mangla was only 47 feet below its capacity holding 4.1 MAF of water. Data of both 2010 and 2015 shows that just days before the onslaught of peak floods, dam bodies were full of water. In other words any dam designed for irrigation purpose on Indus could not be left empty, partially or completely during monsoon days to meet the water requirement for Kharif crops.
Massive flows of Indus require a flood control dam that can be emptied by mid-July to absorb flood flows. This defeats the key premise for Kalabagh Dam professed to be the lynchpin of irrigation and power generation system of the country. Likewise peak monsoon months coincide with the peak demand of electricity that requires maintaining a certain reservoir level to generate maximum possible power. Pakistan meets approximately one-third of its electricity needs through hydel power.
Apart from irrigation, this is another reason requiring the dam belly to remain full of water. It is bizarre to expect that the proposed Kalabagh Dam would serve conflicting demands of flood control while synchronously catering to irrigation and electricity needs.
A grim fact is deliberately glossed over to hoodwink the public — excessive storage during floods actually makes the dam body highly susceptible to abnormal hydraulic pressure. Magnitude of floods in Pakistan is not benign by any reckoning.
Exposing the dam body to a swollen river has its own risks. Impact of super flood of 2010 on a dam body warrants deeper understanding.
In August 2010, Sukkur, Guddu and Kotri barrages braced a flow of over one million cusecs for nearly ten days. Any of the available dams including the proposed Kalabagh Dam would not have the capacity to absorb the mammoth flow. Instead, such a mighty flow would have made the dam structure vulnerable to burst at its seams, hence aggravating the catastrophic flood.
Coinciding with floods in Pakistan, China also faced an onslaught of floods in 2010. At one stage, hundreds of soldiers were deployed to avert a likely break-up of Wenquan reservoir that could have inundated Golmud city with a population of over 200,000 under four meters of deep water. In the same year, the north-east of Brazil, known for droughts, witnessed a deleterious flood killing 50 people and leaving 150,000 homeless. This devastation was mainly caused by the bursting of dams on two rivers. In March 2009, a dam bursting near Jakarta killed scores of people.
Likewise, damming has made drastic alterations in the natural flood plains of the Indus and the contracted trachea of the Indus is also a major cause for the increased intensity of floods.
Undeniably, Pakistan needs an effective flood management system including flood-control reservoirs. However, it requires solutions. Obsession with a contentious dam would not solve the problem. If a dam similar to Kalabagh could address the problem, the best option would be to construct a less controversial Bhasha Dam that is lying in cold storage of Wapda for several years. The dam has been cleared by Council of Common Interests and ECNEC. There are compelling reasons to implement the project forthwith.
The project was inaugurated by the then president Gen Musharraf in 2006. However the water bureaucracy has dumped the project under one or other pretext for a decade now. A lacklustre progress on Bhasha Dam testifies to malafide intentions of water bureaucracy that wants to keep the controversy of Kalabagh Dam alive. Bhasha dam offers no less storage and electricity than Kalabagh Dam, with an advantage of being politically innocuous.
More than 54 maf water drained to the sea in 2010. Had there been a Kalabagh Dam, it would have stored only 6 maf that would not have made any real impact on the ferocity of flood and the ensuing devastation. Only a large dam exclusively built for flood controlling purpose could have absorbed a significant amount of water. An example to this effect is Aswan Dam built on Nile river in 1960-70. The dam body has a capacity to store 107 maf. Before the dam, floods battered the area every year. In the subsequent years, Aswan dam brought considerable relief during floods as well as drought years.
Flood control dams are also referred to as dry dams. As against ordinary dams, dry dams have their discharge system on the riverbed. Dry dams store water only during floods, and are normally not submerged. Quantum of flood flows in Pakistan ideally requires a mega dry dam in the upper reaches of Indus.
The dicey behaviour of climate compounded by rapidly melting glaciers in Himalayas makes Indus an abode of super floods in the coming years. A potential option to sedate super floods is Katzarah Dam that has been kept under a tight lid by Wapda. Unanimously proposed by the inter-provincial and parliamentary commissions and the technical committee on water resources, the dam has the capacity to stash 35 million acre feet of water. Wapda has been rabidly opposing the project which could produce more than 15,000 megawatts of electricity.
In a letter to former prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, Wapda said: “The option of Skardu/Katzarah dam project for further planning has been dropped from Wapda’s Vision 2025.”
Wapda attributed over a dozen negative impacts which it said made the multi-purpose dam site unfeasible in the present circumstances. Limited physical access to area, possible submersion of Skardu and Shigar valleys, inundation of over 13,000 hectares of agriculture land, displacement of 223,847 people and loss of the strategic control of the Siachen and Kargil sectors and line of control were mentioned as major reasons for abandoning the project.
An avid protagonist of the dam, former chairman of IRSA Engr. Fateh Ullah Khan Gandapur, vehemently disapproves these excuses. In his opinion the dam would stem erosion and prolong the life span of downstream dams. Most of the objections attributed to Katzarah Dam are equally valid for any other dam including Kalabagh Dam. Wapda never brought this dam into public debate to identify solutions for the perceived problems attributed to the dam.
After wasting several decades in pursuit of Kalabagh Dam, it would be pertinent to explore politically non-incendiary and technically feasible options like Katzarah. Rather than mourning for Kalabagh Dam after every flood, it would be more apt to construct long overdue Bhasha Dam and give a serious consideration to Katzarah dam."
http://archives.dailytimes.com.pk/business/17-May-2002/kalabagh-dam-only-cure-for-pak-water-woes
May 17, 2002: ISLAMABAD:
Only construction of the Kalabagh Dam can solve the problem of water
scarcity in Pakistan, otherwise the country will lose its water storage
capacity, currently standing at 17 million acre feet (MAF), by 2011.
This was the consensus of officials and water experts from Punjab in an
Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded workshop on the 'Water Resources
Strategy Study in Pakistan' here on Thursday.
However, Sindh member and Indus River System Authority (IRSA) Chairman Noor Muhammad Baloch opposed more dams in Pakistan, saying the Indus river system did not have enough water to be stored. He said making dams will tantamount to wasting billions of dollars. He urged that the actual water available in Pakistan first be gauged and said one could then think about making new water reservoirs......
NWFP Chief Engineer Raqib Khan said if the Frontier province was given the Chashma Right Bank Canal outlet, it will back Kalabagh Dam's construction.
IRSA Member Balochistan Rahim Zarkun said water projects should be made on an area basis and according to that formula Balochistan deserved more dams.
Mr Usam, representing the World Bank, said government policies with regard to resettlement issues following the construction of Mangla and Tarbela dams were not acceptable.
However, Sindh member and Indus River System Authority (IRSA) Chairman Noor Muhammad Baloch opposed more dams in Pakistan, saying the Indus river system did not have enough water to be stored. He said making dams will tantamount to wasting billions of dollars. He urged that the actual water available in Pakistan first be gauged and said one could then think about making new water reservoirs......
NWFP Chief Engineer Raqib Khan said if the Frontier province was given the Chashma Right Bank Canal outlet, it will back Kalabagh Dam's construction.
IRSA Member Balochistan Rahim Zarkun said water projects should be made on an area basis and according to that formula Balochistan deserved more dams.
Mr Usam, representing the World Bank, said government policies with regard to resettlement issues following the construction of Mangla and Tarbela dams were not acceptable.
No comments:
Post a Comment