An interesting possible solution to the Kalabagh dam issue
http://www.dawn.com/2003/text/nat16.htm
ISLAMABAD, Aug 20: People’s Party Patriots MNA Dr Sher Afgan Khan Niazi has supported the construction of Kalabagh dam and proposed merger of Mianwali into the NWFP to remove apprehensions of the people of the province.
Talking to Dawn on Wednesday, the MNA said the people of Mianwali were ready to sacrifice their district for the national cause. He said President Gen Pervez Musharraf in his speech on the occasion of Ghazi Barotha project inauguration had taken a bold step by announcing the construction of Kalabagh and Bhasha dams.
Dr Niazi was of the view that the Kalabagh dam would be beneficial not only for the people of the Punjab, but for the people of the NWFP and Sindh as well.
He appealed to Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan to support the project as the proposed site for its construction was in his constituency. “If Mr Khan considers the national interest supreme and is sincere with the nation, he must support the project,” the MNA said.
He criticized a statement of Awami National Party chief Asfandyar Wali Khan that the dam would be built “on dead bodies” of Pukhtuns and said such statements were issued “to gain cheap popularity.”
He advised the ANP chief not to politicize the project of national importance. He said that after the construction of the Kalabagh dam, about 4,500MW would be generated, from which the people of three provinces could benefit.
The ANP is now powerless. I wonder what Imran has to say about this, as he has a key seat. However, it all depends on what Musharraf wants.
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True. I think it all depends on the people of Mianwali, if they are amenable to the idea of being transferred over. On one hand, it is one country so who cares what district goes to what province, while on the other hand, we must look at the impact of such a district transfer in terms of growth and development.
To be clear, Mush can "impose" the dam's construction without doing the transfer. However it might not be a bad idea to pacify the outrage in NWFP. I wonder if Sindh will want R Y Khan and Baluchistan will demand Rajanpur, after this..
the underlying catch is, NWFP only oppose Dam itself will be built in PUNJAB area mianwali so the will not get much of royality as they get it from Terbela or ghazi barotha.
Moving mianwali to NWFP will solve atleast this issue. Politicians who made this economic project into a political stand just making people fools and want them to be ignorant. this huge project will bring investment in billions in these deprived areas of the country.
I am sure if everyone offered some incentives in cash, ministeries, other benefits.( all these politicians will be quite as they were never opposed to this) as they dont have seats in assemblies they can only try turn people against it, they have nothing do anyway.
As no party has consistant policy towards this project, any party in opposition will continue to oppose this and if they in govt they will support it!
Do we really think our politicians are more competent than engineers and designer from pak and abroad who designed this project???
If they are saying this is safe project and will not harm Nowshehra or anyother big cities in NWFP. why would anybody beleive these ignorant *****.
same time they demand cheaper electricity and say we will not let you build the Dams though!
Why people cant understand this? why they beleive the liar leaders?
only reason >> lack of education and awareness!
thats why many so called leaders dont want masses to benefit from any project like this.
^^ Please don’t confuse the ANP with being the only Party that opposes Kalabagh dam, almost all main stream parties, in the smaller provinces have voted against the Dam (3 out of 4 provincial assemblies), as well as a senate sub committee. besides them several well known NGO’s have also warned against the effect of constructiong the Dam, if you check
http://sungi.sdnpk.org/ under it’s publications section it has a full report on why the dam should not be published, and this was by the NGO run by the late federal minister Umer Asghar Khan. There are other opponents of the dam who oppose it on purely technical grounds as well. The whole issue of Mianwali is complicated, because many parts of the province were originally part of NWFP like Attock was. Lastly, while Musharraf could push the project through you have to remember Nawaz Sharif said he would do the same on National television, and he had to backtrack.
The royalty issue is a very personal issue for the people of NWFP as well, they have not been paid even the agreed share of the royalty and neither have all the affectees been resettled after the construction of the dam.
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*Originally posted by The_Jackal: *
Well since most mianwali residents, speak sarika, persian and pushtoo i think they should fit in well with the NWFP..
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persian?? yara you must be joking me! Btw, its Hindko, Pashto and Punjabi NOT Seraiki. Mianwali is in Northern Punjab, no seraiki speakers here.
Zak, that's pretty accurate, I have family in Mianwali and Kala Bagh and I was laughing reading the above garbage. More Mianwalias speak French than they speak Pashtoo or Urdu. Saraiki is actually something that is spoken along Dera Ismail Khan range stretching from Banuu along the Indus River down to Multan. Now Mianwali is considered a Division that encompasses large area that's why Pashtoo is mentioned in your find, otherwise, you won't hear Pashtoo walking around in Mianwali.
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*Originally posted by Zakk: *
^^ Please don't confuse the ANP with being the only Party that opposes Kalabagh dam, almost all main stream parties, in the smaller provinces have voted against the Dam (3 out of 4 provincial assemblies), as well as a senate sub committee. besides them several well known NGO's have also warned against the effect of constructiong the Dam, if you check
The royalty issue is a very personal issue for the people of NWFP as well, they have not been paid even the agreed share of the royalty and neither have all the affectees been resettled after the construction of the dam.
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I am not pointing to any party in particular, I am saying to everybody who is against it. and in the paper number one reason royaliry and Punjab domination seems to derive every other bit of the paper. theres is no source or refernce information for that document to be regarded as serious research.
I would say make it federal dam and devide royality to all provinces not just Punjab, if That helps to resolve this issue.
whenever there is a Mega project like this happens a mass displacement do occurr. and If it wasnt managed properly in past, that doesnt mean the project itself is not worth finishing.
^^ NYA: Thanks for the information I think the pashto spoken maybe on the Mianwali side which is geographically on the other side of the Indus , and the rest would be pashtun migrants. Personally the bit abot Sindhi surprised me more than anything else! anyway, you can't judge the district population from a walk in the main town alone, for example in case of Peshawar old city, you may think there are few pashtuns in Peshawar.
Shak: My relatives live in the Nowshera side which would be flooded by the Dam, WAPDA has no credibility when it comes to debates about the Dam, it can't convince the Sindhi's or the NWFP Assembly members, so why should the dam go ahead? musharraf himself tried in 2000 to convince Sindhis about the need for the Dam and couldn't change a single persons mind. While Sher Afghan's idea has some merit there are a lot of technical reasons and management issues before the dam is even considered feasible.
Zakk, I know a family personally that owns large tracts of land around Bhkhar (near Jhang and near Kalabagh). They have paid millions to their elected officials (their relatives) to raise the stink that the Dam is built on where they want it built, so they can make a killing by selling their otherwise useless land. I was part of a company that did the initial feasibility study (however I joined them a lot later), but I do have access to their findings. The problem is that all is needed is leadership. Large-scale project such as these cannot (and should not) take provincial sentiments into account. As it is, the power is way below Pakistan's demand and delaying this project any further will mean chaos in times to come. It is true that building such damn (regardless of where it is built) will create massive problems (socio-economic to migration) but the price of not building it will exceed all other costs.
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*Originally posted by NYAhmadi: *
As it is, the power is way below Pakistan's demand and delaying this project any further will mean chaos in times to come.
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It may be true a few years ago, but not any more. Yes Kalabagh dam will result in cheaper electricity costs, but since the last few years, Pakistan has abundance of power, primarly due to Independent Power Plants (IPP) set up by the private sector during Benazir government's short-sighted policies of assuring a minimum payment to these IPP operators. I am sure you remember the Hubco fiasco. I think, if for nothing else, the government of Pakistan can actually go bankrupt just by complying with its statutory contractual obligations to these IPPs.
The only silver-lining is that there is really an abundance of power, and that is why we have not heard the word load-shedding in many years. In fact, at one time, Pakistan had so much power, that they were looking for ways to sell it to India (the plan never materialized).
Although Kalabagh Dam is much more than just cheap electricity. We definitely need dams for our water management. That issue alone, can break Pakistan as water crunch will become bigger and worse in the years to come. We saw a trailer of severe water shortage in Sindh last year. Unless we manage the water to make sure its stored during high season and released through out the remaining year, this issue will just get worse.
On a lighter note, during a town-meeting in internal Sindh, there was a local leader who was making a passionate speech to oppose Kalabagh dam. One of his classic lines "Hamm kissi qeemat per Kalabagh dam nahi banay dein gay. Bhaiyon! Aap khud sochain... ye Dam Sindhiyon ke khilaaf aik Punjabi saazish hai. Ye chahtain hein ke Paani hamm takk puhunchnay say pehlay, ye uss mein say saari bijli nikal lein!!!"
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*Originally posted by NYAhmadi: *
Faisal, over half of industrial factories are generating their own electricity, because buying it from the state is too expensive.
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That is entirely true. In addition these industries are actually producing more power than they need and the government of Pakistan is contractually bound to pay them a fixed amount every year, whether the Government of Pakistan (in the form of WAPDA or KESC or whatever) needs to buy this excess power or not. Plus, almost all these private industries are producing power through Diesel generators, which is (1) more expensive, (2) requires Pakistan to import more oil, and (3) Environmentally unfriendly.
Most industries produce their own power, not only because it is cheaper, but because power from WAPDA (etc) is unreliable and (shutting down and restarting the machines) costs them a hecka lot more. In the deal, they can also sell their own excess power to WAPDA, which is merely a very tasty icing on the cake.
NYA: In case of big projects, you do take into account local sentiment to an extent, but it's not so localised, the Sindh Assembly passed 3 resolutions against the Dam, many Irrigation experts from the 3 provinces have made serious technical critcisms of the KBD. The other point is it has transcended Party loyalty in the other provinces when it comes to opposing the project. WAPDA as I said has absolutely no credibility in the provinces, it runs on Dams located in NWFP and can't even compensate the people originally displaced by Tarbela and Mangla Dam, it failed to settle the Royalty issue with NWFP to this day and in general the provinces have absolutely no say in any decisions made by Public Sector Corporations like WAPDA and Natural gas. The problem is leadership, but a leader who understands that Pakistan is NOT a unitary state and decisions cannot be made unilaterally in a Federal system.
This link has a collection of articles on the Kalabagh Dam, while many may disagree with the owners of site, the articles like this one are from well respected writers and civil servants:
Threat To Nowshera Town, Peshawar Valley And Geological Aspects
A lot of concern has been expressed about the harmful effect of Kalabagh Dam due to flooding of Nowshera town and rise of water table in Peshawar valley. It is feared that as a result of rise of water level due to ponding up at Kalabagh, the water level in Kabul river will rise due to back water effect, thus posing serious threat to the town of Nowshera and Peshawar valley. In this context it is pertinent to mention the Chinese experience of Sanmenxia reservoir constructed on the Yellow river in the year 1960. Due to acute sedimentation problem, this dam had to be redesigned and reconstructed within a short period of four years, because back water deposit extended up stream with remarkable rapidity endangering industrial and agriculture activities in the vicinity of the reservoir. The effect of sediment has extended for considerable distance upstream of the reservoir. The configuration of Kalabagh Dam is more or less similar to Sanmenxia dam and therefore we must take a lesson from the Chinese experience. Though it is not possible to forecast accurately the trend of siltation after construction of Kalabagh Dam, it is certain that a very high risk is involved which needs to be avoided. Moreover, geological experts have many reservations about the Kalabagh Dam site as it is located in an area with many geological faults, which may endanger the safety of the dam. Besides, the reservoir area is in close proximity of Khewra and Kohat salt ranges which will pollute the water causing high salinity, thereby affecting its suitability for irrigation.
Conclusions
WAPDA has made desperate but vain attempts to prop up the falling edifice of Kalabagh. To this end, they have:-
exaggerated the mean year water availability by a huge 22.4 MAF by making fantastic assumptions that:
Storage of 6.1 MAF in Kalabagh Dam will salvage system losses by 7 MAF!
4 MAF of water will be generated in the catchment of eastern rivers in Pakistan above rim stations.
Deviated from their own method of computations just to somehow increase the figure of water availability, knowing fully well that for design of large projects, it is always better to err on the safe side, and apply some factor of safety.
Arbitrarily changed their own 1987 criterion of water availability of 4 out of 5 years to mean/average year, though the 1987 criterion was also endorsed by President Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari when he was Minister for Water and Power in 1990.
Tried to link the Kalabagh Dam with silting of present reservoirs. WAPDA do not want to increase the water level in Mangla dam, which can be done without any capital investment, but instead they want to construct Kalabagh Dam at the cost of Rs. 250 billion!
Attempted to convey the impression that Kalabagh Dam is the only feasible project for storage and hydel power generation, and that it is ready for implementation. To make Kalabagh look indispensable, WAPDA has put the promising run of the river projects in cold storage and taken no serious steps to utilize huge coal reserves of Thar for power generation.
Water for storage is available only in very high flood years when it is in excess of Kharif needs and requirements of present storages. The WAPDA data shows that such high floods have occurred only in 12 out of 72 years. It is possible to store this water only by construction of carry over dam. Highest Kharif flows have occurred in 1959-60 (154.74 MAF) and in 1950-51 (151.28 MAF). In such years as much as 25 to 30 MAF is available which can not be stored in a dam like Kalabagh. Some preliminary investigations carried out earlier indicate the availability of a site for carry over dam at Skardu. Possibly Bhasha can also be re-designed as a carry over dam, though its capacity may not be as much as Skardu. The advantages of a carry over dam are:-
It will store every drop of surplus water available during very high flood years for use in subsequent years.
The water stored in a carry over dam can be released to supplement the requirements of the existing storages in the years of low flows.
It can counter the effect of silting of existing down stream storage and also check further silting of the reservoir thus increasing its life.
It can be very effective for flood control, because it can impound all excess flood waters, whereas existing storages are not so effective for flood control because of their limited capacity and they are almost full when flood water comes.
There is serious deterioration in the ecological conditions in the deltaic region, due to a continuous increase in water use/ commitments. Statistics show that even the quantity of 10 MAF provisionally earmarked in the Water Accord of 1991 is not available for 48 out of 72 years. It is not possible to improve this situation by reducing the water allocations of existing projects or by leaving existing reservoirs unfilled. However, to prevent complete devastation, future carry over storages should be planned so that only the river flows in excess of present needs for existing projects and storages, and allowing 300,000 cusecs for out flow to sea whenever available, will be impounded.
The proposed Kalabagh Dam poses great risk to the fertile Peshawar valley and Nowshera town. The quality of impounded water will also be polluted by salinity due to proximity of Khewra and Kohat salt formations.
The alternatives to Kalabagh Dam are:
a carry over dam for storage of every drop of surplus water in high flood years.
raising water level in Mangla dam to offset the effect of silting.
launching of run of the river hydel projects like Dasu and Bunji etc.
use of Thar coal for generation. The Minister of Water and Power has said that he will announce Power Policy in the month of July, 1997. It is suggested that run of the river hydel projects and coal based power generation should be hall marks of this policy.
It is clearly established that the Kalabagh Dam project does not satisfy even the basic conditions of viability. If the dam is constructed inspite of this position, it will stand high and dry for most of the years as a monument of defective planning and wasteful expenditure. Under these circumstances, we urge upon the decision makers:
It's true Zakk. That's why leadership is so important. These are the challenges that Pakistan will have to face day in and day out. Sitting on these issues for over 40 years is going to produce eggs and not electricity. A good leadership can find creative solutions to make it a win win situation for all. No one asked provinces before building the bomb, but they built it.
^ NYA: The bomb was different and it was in self defence, a good leader looks for an alternative if neccessary and tries to form a consensus when it comes to issues of the Nation and not defence issues. The obsession with KBD has delayed dozens of smaller dams, and other possible projects which are far less controversial and less devastating to the local ecology, the question is not why not build Kalabagh Dam, but rather why are some people obsessed with the Dam over far better alternatives. The answer is simple, the provinces do not matter and by that implication the people of those provinces do not matter as far as Pakistan's leaders are concerned. In the end it's a question of fairness and in decision making, and as we all know fairness is a word alien to many Pakistani decision makers.