DELAY IN CONSTRUCTION OF DAMS

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

Monday, December 14, 2009
Islamabad

The twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad could face acute water shortage in near future if small dams such as Cherah and Daducha on Soan and Ling rivers were not built and leakages wasting 50% of water not plugged.

The main water sources like Rawal, Khanpur and Simly dams have very little capacity to meet the water demands of the two cities. In recent past, the Capital Development Authority (CDA) had prepared a plan with the help of Punjab government for supply of clean drinking water from Ghazi-Brotha Project. But work on the project has not yet started because of some technical reasons.

The Khanpur Dam was the main source of water supply to twin cities which was built at a wrong site by the Ayub Khan government. In 1986, the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) adopted an alternative route to provide water to twin cities from this dam, which did not prove to be a useful alternative.

This news agency has learnt that the water supply from Khanpur Dam to twin cities involved three different options in the past, but the ECNEC did not approve the most feasible and perfect option of Margalla water tunnel, which was strongly recommended by the CDA.

“The Margalla water tunnel project had an estimated cost of Rs320 million in the year 1985, which could be doubled to Rs640 million in recent times because of the inflation factor; but still it was a feasible project with a less operational and maintenance cost to existing project of water supply to twin cities from Khanpur Dam.

People were given a wrong impression that there was too little water in Khanpur Dam. The dam’s spillways had been opened several times during the last year alone, which showed that water availability was not a problem but how to suck the water up from 400 metres.

The other two dams like Rawal and Simly dams have also filled with mud and sand. The water capacity of these dams has considerably reduced due to this reason. Neither Punjab nor NWFP cleaned the channel of Khanpur Dam, which had made the filtration plant inefficient.

An environmentalist said that at present Rawalpindi had a population of 1.9 million and with the present growth rate it would touch 5 million by 2030. Now the city required more than 36 MGD water, however, by 2030 the water requirement would also increase. He said that two small dams — Chirah Dam on Soan River and Daducha Dam on River Ling could be easily built in Rawalpindi to meet future water requirements of its residents.Both dams, he said, were unavoidable, if the government wanted to avert the long-predicted water crisis in Rawalpindi.