Concerning the Kalabagh dam controversy

By Kaleem Omar

General Pervez Musharraf was right when he said five years ago that Pakistan urgently needs to build more big dams to boost the country's water-storage capacity, citing the example of Turkey which has built 40 dams on the Tigris River and other rivers over the last three decades, while Pakistan, during roughly the same period, has built only two: Mangla Dam on the River Jhelum (completed in 1968) and Tarbela Dam on the River Indus (completed in 1974).

Addressing the editors of Sindhi newspapers at Governor House in Karachi on July 14, 2000, Gen Musharraf said: "If we take a decision right now to go ahead with the construction of a dam, it will be completed in the year 2010, by which time the water shortage (in the country) will rise to 6 million acre-feet, and by the year 2014 or 2015 the shortage will go up to 8 million to 10 million acre-feet. Would it not be stupidity if we keep losing our water and our people keep longing for it? Do we want to give our people a concept that they should go on longing for water?"

The answer to that question, of course, is that, no, we most certainly do not want our people to go on facing water shortages, or go on living in a climate of perpetual uncertainty about whether they will have enough water for their crops from one year to the next. But the question that then arises is where should the next big dam be built: at Kalabagh or at Bhasha?

Islamabad is no closer to evolving a national consensus on the issue today than it was five years ago. Punjab continues to press for building Kalabagh, while NWFP and Sindh continue to oppose it, arguing that Bhasha would be a better option.

President Musharraf, for his part, says that, eventually, both dams will have to be built to meet the country's growing water needs.

The building of more dams is vital not only for Pakistan's agriculture but also for the economy as a whole since these dams would be dual-purpose dams, serving as both water-storage reservoirs and hydroelectric dams for generating low-cost electricity.

Pakistan is richly endowed with hydroelectric potential. More than 30,000 MW of hydroelectric power potential may be economically viable in the north of the country.

A large number of medium- and large-sized hydroelectric projects have been studied to varying levels of detail. During the course of the preparation of Wapda's National Power Plan in 1991-1994, updated cost estimates were prepared for major projects which had been previously studied by other consultants to pre-feasibility level or better.

For projects which had been identified but not studied to at least pre-feasibility level, the National Power Plan said that these identified projects had to be studied further before they could be considered as potential additions to the system.

Prepared over a period of 30 months by a firm of Canadian consultants and Pakistani experts from Wapda, the NPP was the most comprehensive exercise of its kind ever undertaken in Pakistan, and was designed to meet country's power needs up to the year 2018.

In March 1994, however, only three weeks before the plan was due to be submitted to the government, the Benazir government came out with an energy policy of its own.

The main focus of the energy policy was on setting up thermal power plants in the private sector. By ignoring the National Power Plan and not incorporating its recommendations in the 1994 energy policy, the Benazir government, in effect, negated the whole purpose of the NPP exercise.

Most of the thermal plants set up under the 1994 policy run on imported furnace oil, resulting in a huge increase in Pakistan's oil import bill. Soaring international oil prices have made the situation worse, with the oil import bill projected to rise to more than $ 5 billion this year.

Since 1997 there has been a five-fold increase in the price of imported furnace oil. This has further pushed up Pakistan's electricity tariffs, making them amongst the highest in the world.

High electricity tariffs have led to cost increases across the board, fuelling inflation and making Pakistani products less competitive in export markets. High electricity tariffs have also made the problem of poverty-reduction more intractable.

As the final report of the National Power Plan noted, six major hydroelectric projects have been studied to pre-feasibility level or better.

Of these six, project preparation for Kalabagh is in an advanced stage of readiness, while Ghazi-Barotha -- a 1,450 megawatt hydel generation run-of-the-river project on the Indus downstream of Tarbela was commissioned in December 2003. The other four projects require additional study before a firm commitment to go ahead with them can be made.

The proposed Kalabagh Dam project is located on the Indus 192 km downstream of Tarbela Dam and 26 km upstream of Jinnah Barrage, and immediately below the confluence with the Soan River. Below the dam site, the Indus enters the plains and there are no further opportunities for the creation of large reservoirs.

With a main dam height of 260 feet and a maximum retention level of 915 SPD, Kalabagh would have a gross storage capacity of 7.9 million acre-feet, of which 6.1 million acre-feet would be usable. The area of the reservoir, at retention level, would be 110,200 acres.

To be located on the left bank of the river, the initial power plant at Kalabagh would have eight turbines, each of 300 MW nominal capacity and 347 MW at full supply level, for a total maximum capacity of 2,776 MW. The design makes provision for the later addition of 4 more generation units. If all 12 units were installed, the maximum output would be 4,164 MW at full supply level, or nearly as much as Tarbela (3,478 MW) and Mangla (1,000 MW) put together.

One of the arguments put forward by the proponents of Kalabagh is that its reservoir would "increase the reliability of supply of irrigation water, and compensate for the loss of storage at Tarbela, which is occurring due to siltation."

Since Tarbela's completion in 1974, sedimentation to the extent of 2.6 million acre-feet in the reservoir has reduced its gross storage capacity from 11.62 million acre-feet to less than 9 million acre-feet.

Mangla, which originally had a gross storage capacity of 5.35 million acre-feet, is also silting up, though not as fast as Tarbela thanks to a watershed management and silt-trap storage project in the catchment area above the dam.

Raising Mangla Dam's height by 40 feet (work on which is now underway) is aimed at making up for the loss of reservoir storage capacity due to silting.

Building a dam at Kalabagh would compensate for the storage capacity lost due to the silting up of the Tarbela reservoir. But this objective could also be achieved by building a dam at Bhasha. A dam at Bhasha would also significantly reduce the rate of siltation in the Tarbela reservoir, increasing its usable life by 30 years or more. That's something Kalabagh cannot do because it would be downstream of Tarbela.

The dam site of the proposed Bhasha power project is located on the upper Indus River 314 km upstream of Tarbela Dam and about 120 km downstream of the confluence with the Gilgit River. The drainage area of the dam site is 152,000 square km.

The power plant at Bhasha would comprise 12 turbines, each with an output of 205 MW at a design net head of 145 meters. Power production at full supply level would be 3,360 MW, or 80 per cent of Kalabagh's. The Bhasha power project was studied by Montreal Engineering Company of Canada in the early 1980s, and is described in their 1984 feasibility report. This was a detailed investigation, but the project requires furthers study before the final design stage can commence.

An environmental investigation of Bhasha has also been carried out. Preliminary studies and a reconnaissance mission in the early 1990s by experts from the Asian Development Bank concluded that the environmental impact of building a hydroelectric dam there would not be severe.