Managing River Flows: Post @ 42

River Flow Management

Recently, in a TV debate over the Kalabagh Dam, Haji Adeel of the Awami National Party said no province would object if Punjab were to construct dams near Wagha or at any other location inside Punjab based on its share as per the Water Apportionment Accord of 1991. This statement may have been a sarcastic one but it also presents, though perhaps inadvertently, a potential lead for a new way of water resources development by building off-channel storage facilities.

The floods killed over 1,700 people and displaced millions. They also destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of standing crops as well as bridges, roads, irrigation and drainage facilities, houses and other infrastructure. Millions of displaced people, looking for food and shelter, now worry about their future. The government of Pakistan has appealed to the international community for help as it is difficult for it to manage this emerging crisis on its own.

The lack of national foresight is best displayed by recalling how only a few months back, we had an environment in which  all stakeholders were protesting vociferously about the prevailing shortage of water supplies and then people were praying for the raging waters to recede. In that context, the floods have highlighted our incompetency and inability to manage the flow of fresh water within the country.

This brings us back to the root cause of the problem: the absence of supply-side river-water management. Unless there is agreement on a package of supply-side river-water management measures, we will not be able to manage either the monsoon floods or the shortage of water for the rest of the year. And the inability to do this has an adverse impact in that it affects the federation.

It is interesting to note that the Colorado River in America’s southwest (it runs for 2,330 kilometres) has an annual yield of only 12 MAF (million acre-feet), while storages built along the river can hold approximately 65 MAF — almost five times the annual yield. Yet, even the divided Indus River System delivers around 145 MAF of water to Pakistan, but our water storage is barely 12 MAF. Compared to other similar international river/water storage projects, our performance is simply a huge embarrassment to say the least. Why can’t we have water reservoirs with a higher capacity at a ratio similar to that of the storage ratio of the Colorado River?

The real success of river-water supply management in Pakistan will depend significantly on the conditions we create to address all possible water supply-related threats that disturb the timing and flow of river water.  In this context, after forgoing the option to build large reservoirs for irrigation on the Indus or its main tributaries without prior consensus, we are left with the alternative of allowing each province of Pakistan to take responsibility for storing its full or partial allocated share in its respective off-channel storage facilities, as agreed in the Accord of 1991.

Clearly, this option presents a win-win solution as it caters well for the following: 1. The political stands of Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces are accommodated by agreeing not to build multi-purpose dams on the main Indus or its tributaries; 2. Inter-provincial tensions over water distribution during high demand periods should dissipate; and 3. Off-channel water storages in the Potohar region such as Akhori, Rohtas, Sanjwal and Dhok Pathan should provide capacity for Punjab to store its share of water, ranging from 20 to 25 MAF each year, from all three western rivers.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th, 2010.