Small dams no substitute for large ones: seminar told

[Naveed Yaseen]

LAHORE: Small dams are no alternative to mega dams as the country would require 750 small dams to store water equivalent to the capacity of Kalabagh dam. Besides this, the country does not have so many sites for small dams.

Former Water and Power Development Authority chairman Engineer Shamsul Mulk stated this while addressing a seminar on ‘Electric water stability and requirement of large dams’, organised by the Institution of Engineers Pakistan.

“It is a tragedy that in the midst of a global energy and food crisis we are trying to reinvent the wheel without proper information. The reality on the ground is that Pakistan currently has 68 small dams with an average capacity to irrigate 8,500 acres of land. None of these dams produces electricity. Moreover, there are no sites for these dams in NWFP, Sindh and south Punjab,” he said.

A few dams, he added, could be built in northern Punjab though they would not meet agricultural water needs of the country and would certainly not produce a single unit of electricity. He said Pakistan needed three to four large dams of the size of Kalabagh or Tarbela to overcome the water and energy crisis and ensure food security.

“The nation has not yet seen actual face of energy crisis as it is not the quality of electricity but the price that would matter if we continued promoting furnace oil-based power generation,” said the former WAPDA chairman. He said one unit of electricity produced by Tarbela still cost only 75 paisa while upcoming thermal projects had been allowed Rs15 per unit.

He said Pakistan was blessed with the fifth largest catchment area in the world with capability to build many large dams which could solve the energy and water crisis. By ignoring large dams, he added, the government was complicating the situation.

Head of Punjab Chief Minister’s Task Force on Agriculture Col (Retd) Khanzada Shuja said “we are at the crossroads where we do not know which way to go.” Despite an acute water and fertiliser shortage, he said, the Punjab government expected to reap a bumper wheat crop thanks to timely rains. “Punjab would be made the ‘granary’ of Pakistan.”

IEP President Engineer Aftab Islam Agha, in his address, said Pakistan was producing 36.4 per cent of electricity from gas, 32.5 per cent from water and 0.1 per cent from coal. Despite having second largest coal deposits in the world, he pointed out, Pakistan had neglected power production through this source which was used to generate 40 per cent of total global electricity. He regretted the loss of a huge quantity of water in sea due to absence of large dams.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=159384