[...]Energy Crisis and Pakistan | Ammar-3Sixty![...]…

SAMAR NAWAZ ECONOMIST:

I LIKE ALL COMMENT SO MUCH I THINK SO THAT WE SHOULD USE NATURAL RESOURCES

• 60,000 acres of area will be affected by the 1 in 5 year floods
• 16 number unprotected villages will be required to be acquired and their population resettled
• 109,783 persons will require resettlement elsewhere.
• Another 250,000 persons will be requiring protection through 24 feet high dykes
• A total of 28 miles long flood protection dykes will be constructed along the Kabul River, out of which 18 miles length will be specifically required to protect the Nowshera town alone.
• The dykes retained water was feared to contribute to the overall rise in water table in the immediate vicinity of the reservoir and the local population will certainly face severe problem from rainwater.

In addition, the following facilities were feared to be permanently submerged in the reservoir in a 1 in 100-year flood, and therefore required relocation:

• 20.45 km of National Highway, 2 km Nowshera-Mardan road,
• 10 km Nizampur Attock road, 25 km Pir Sabak-Jehangira road
• 6.92-km Railway line between Khairabad – Nowshera
• 5.43 km railway line between Nowshera – Mardan
• Bridge at Khushal Garh
• Khairabad Bridge at Attock required strengthening and modifications
• Jehangira Bridge required raising by 15 ft
• Nowshera Railway Bridge required raising by 6-ft
• Nowshera Mardan Bridge required raising by 6-ft
• Telecommunication, power lines and gas lines also required relocation

In the light of these findings, the Government of NWFP requested WAPDA to revise the project. Lately, WAPDA has revised the designs and reduced the reservoir elevation to 915-ft above MSL in July 1986. In addition, declared the designs safe against all the evils of the previous design.

Whereas, the validity of WAPDA’s statement of a mere 10-ft reduction in reservoir height to solve all the problems is questionable and worth detailed investigation, the people of NWFP doubt the predictions of WAPDA’s experts due to their previously ill-conceived designs of KBD, and hold strong apprehensions against the real objectives of the project.

They, therefore, still believe that the dam will raise the water level of River Indus throughout the Attock gorge, right through the Haro river confluence and upto the Akora Khattak on Kabul River. And resultantly, the Nowshera City, inhibited by 200,000 people falling on both the left and right banks of Kabul River, will be under severe threat of flooding. And in the long term of about 50 years time, the Nowshera City and its adjoining areas will become waterlogged swamplands, due to the seepage from the raised water level.

The Mardan and Swabi SCARP projects, covering 123,000 acres of irrigated land, will face certain threat of failure, because of their outfalls being lower than the high flood levels in KBD reservoir.

WAPDA has prepared a water release pattern of the post KBD irrigation supplies, which will have an adverse impact on the CRBC project, as it does not provide enough water for undertaking the lift components of CRBC in future. Similarly, the CRBC is also likely to be affected for long periods during the construction of the project and during the first ponding of the reservoir

Therefore, in the absence of an independent assessment of the damages at the 915-ft reservoir level, and with no-trust in WAPDA’s claims of all-well, the people of NWFP take the previously arrived figures of social and economic costs as an eye opener on the viability of the project. People still believe that the mere 10-ft reduction in reservoir level will have a negligible mitigating impact in taking care of the colossal injury to NWFP.

The dam would be located in the province of the Punjab, but its reservoir will inundate fertile plains of the upstream province of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and some of the existing infrastructure (road, bridges) etc., will also be affected/submerged. The permanent water impoundment in this area will reportedly also raise water table in the vicinity of NWFP, leading to increased instances of water logging and salinity. Some of the adverse impacts associated with the dam could be reduced by lowering the height of the dam, but even this option is not acceptable to the provincial government of NWFP.

While the reservoir will be in the NWFP, the dam’s electricity-generating turbines will be just across the provincial border in Punjab. Therefore, Punjab would get royalties from the central government in Islamabad for generating electricity. Contrary to this, however, Punjab has agreed not to accept any royalties from the Kalabagh Dam. The fact that the NWFP will suffer the adverse consequences of the reservoir but not get royalties is seen as unfair.

Concerns that large areas of Nowshera district would be submerged by the dam and even wider areas would suffer from water logging and salinity as has occurred with the Tarbela Dam. The consequences of Kalabagh will be felt severely by Frontier Province:

• 182,000 acres of productive land will be lost under the reservoir.
• 109,783 people will be displaced with another 64,884 in Punjab. (According to WAPDA Water Wing Annual Report for the Year 2001-02).

Nowshera, a sizeable city of Frontier Province, will be threatened (Nowshera town itself will stand 24 feet below on the height of Kalabagh storage) with, at worst, horrible termination if the dykes break, or at best, serve degradation of land by water-logging in about 20 years times.

The construction of Kalabagh Dam involved stakeholders of local provincial governments whom expressed their dissatisfaction towards the adverse impacts of the dam. Hence, the project is still under consideration because it has not received unanimous support.

Unsuccessful resolution of these conflicts have also held prospects of tapping other locations for dam on the Indus with sizeable hydroelectric potential, namely Basha (4500 MW) and Dasu (2,712 MW) with consequential adverse impact on economic development of the country. Innovative approaches to reconcile the needs and concerns of the participating provinces with due consideration to environmental assessment are badly needed to break this impasse.

The dam site is close to the massive Kohat and Khewra salt ranges, the latter containing the oldest operating salt mine in the world. The leaching of large quantities of salt from these ranges into the river system as a result of ground saturation and changes to hydrology in the region because of the dam are major concerns for opponents.

Pakistan’s Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) puts the total cultivable land to be permanently submerged as a result of the dam at around 14,000 hectares. However, independent assessments have put the figure as high as 74,000 hectares. Neither figure includes lands that will be inundated during a river flood event. Nor do these figures take account of the effect of the rise in river levels above the dam.

The construction of the dam threatens the Nowshera valley in the NWFP with inundation during a flood. Also threatened with flooding will be Nowshera City which straddles the Kabul River and has a population of 200,000.

The generation from Ghazi Barotha will badly be affected and will reduce considerably when KBD reservoir level is above 853 ft above MSL.