Supply Side River-Water Management: Post 33

Supply Side Water Management

Generally, supply-side  river-water management means developing new surface water sources, building additional water storage facilities, diverting water from one basin to another, or treating water that might not otherwise be potable. Pakistan can perhaps be considered a country with developed surface infrastructure. However, we lack for the additional storage facilities to tackle excessive seasonal unevenness, floods, in river flows over a shorter period of time mainly during monsoon, and then augmenting short supplies from the rivers over a longer span of say 9-10 months every year.

Ongoing menace of floods and heavy rains have destroyed thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands acres of  standing crops as well as bridges, roads, irrigation and drainage facilities, houses and other useful infrastructure in all regions of Pakistan. There are millions of displaced persons looking for food and shelter and worried about their future. The Government of Pakistan has appealed to the international community for help as it is difficult to manage this emerging crisis on its own.

While our hearts and prayers go out for the departed souls and surviving victims of this calamity, it will be an appropriate time for us to reflect on this hard-hitting warning from nature that we need to put an end to the ever prevailing drought of creative imagination about water supply management to manage all sort of water crisis effectively. How many more lives will be scarified and valuable assets destroyed before we wake up to meet an old curse of water supply mismanagement in Pakistan? It is high time that we help our hard-core hydro-politicians to agree to a way out that could be made acceptable to many opinion-makers without losing their face to their respective constituencies to minimize severe droughts and floods every year.

Isn't it interesting that only few days back, we had an environment that all stakeholders were protesting vociferously about the prevailing shortage of water supplies but now everyone is asking for prayers to seek safety from the excessive raging waters? I am sure that outsiders must be confused too about the contrasting scenarios that emerge from Pakistan so often and wondering about our incompetency and inability to manage such skewed water patterns.

This brings us back to the root cause of this problem: absence of required supply-side river-water management. Unless we agree on a package of supply-side river-water management; we do not have any chance to manage either floods of monsoon or shortage of water for the rest of the year. As this leads to serious conflict on the distribution of water, we may not have a bright future of a strong federation as well. For the last many decades, since we are missing consensus to manage a skewed water supply pattern, we are missing a real opportunity for becoming the California of Asia – the world’s richest state with comparable agriculture resources to Pakistan. 

It is interesting to note that the Colorado River has an annual yield of only 15 BCM (12 MAF), while storages built along the river can hold approximately 80.2 BCM (65 MAF)—almost five folds the annual yield. Yet, even the divided Indus River System delivers around 179 BCM (145 MAF) to Pakistan, but our water storage is barely 15 BCM (12 MAF) with an equivalent number of dams. 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 total capacity of 900 BCM at a ratio similar to that of the storage ratio of the Colorado River instead of the paltry 15 BCM?

Unfortunately, we as a nation are in a bind: On one hand, without building new dams for storing excessive supplies of the Indus River System, we have no future for our water-based economy; and on the other hand, without securing consensus among all four provinces for building new dams, we fear to run a risk of endangering our federation of four provinces. Parallel to this statement, I just cannot stop myself saying that not trying to find alternatives to develop water storages is a definite sign of no future of any kind for Pakistan.

Fortunately, there is no conflict among provinces about having cascade of run-of-the-river hydro-power dams. Let us give our full support to generate cheaper and environment-friendly energy to bring back our agricultural and industrial economy on track for this competitive world. To end inter-provincial standoff, we should agree not to build any multi-purpose dams either on the Indus or any of its main tributaries without developing consensus to do so. At the same, we must not stop there and wait till such magic moment arrives with a big “if” as a rider. In the meanwhile, we cannot afford not to look for alternatives.

It is also a fact that people are extremely concerned about the emerging threat to irrigated agriculture due to severe shortages of water when it is needed the most and the possibility of floods when water use is bare minimum. These referred abnormal fluctuations of water supply can occur by design if India wishes to manipulate the supply via the dozens of dams either already constructed or planned on all of the three western rivers allocated to Pakistan.  Similarly, it can also occur due to the on-going global climatic changes.

In the end however, the real success of river-water supply management will depend significantly on the conditions we create right in Pakistan to address all possible stated 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 share, as agreed in the Accord of 1991, in their respective off-channel storage facilities.

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

Let us examine this alternative a bit more in depth. In the case of Khyber –Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, both sides of the Indus River and Pothwar region can provide excellent opportunities for off-channel water storages. Since Sindh and Baluchistan have limited off-channel storage sites, either they can have their own storage facilities in Gilgit-Baltistan or jointly with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab in the Potohar region.

A point worth noting is that if this option of up-stream off-channel sites is accepted, the present irrigation system can easily be connected with their respective canal systems to augment flow during lean river flows. However, since making use of off-stream storing water that is distributed under the Accord of 1991 will fall within provincial jurisdiction, all provinces must be authorized and facilitated by the federal government to build any size dam as they wish.

This proposed alternative is a significant component of the way out from the emerging severe water crisis in the country. Clearly, this option presents a win-win solution as it caters well for the following:

Ø  Political stands of Sindh, Baluchistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces are accommodated by agreeing not to build multi-purpose dams on the main Indus or its tributaries;

Ø  Such an alternative will allow to build cascades of hydro-power dams on all main channels to generate cheap and environmentally friendly electricity;

Ø  Inter-provincial tensions over water distribution during high demand periods should dissipate as the quantity due within season will take precedent as compared to the weekly water distributions that are practiced at present;

Ø  Off-channel water storages in Pothwar area Like Akhori, Rohtas,  Sanjwal and Dhok Pathan should provide convenient capacity for Punjab to store its share of water, ranging from 20 to 25 MAF each year, from all three western rivers; and

Ø  This way out helps to avoid blame games concerning water theft from being played out between provinces as it is based on the already agreed water shares as defined by the Water Apportionment Accord of 1991.