Building Dams
January 27, 2006
Last
week two major events in Pakistan occurred simultaneously.
Mishandled, they could have pushed the country
into significant civil unrest and perhaps even
threatened Musharraf’s grip on power. But
in the end, he appears to have made the correct
choices again, and retains a firm hold on the
country. The first event was the missile strike
by the US that killed 18 people in Waziristan.
I will write about that next week.
The second event, but the one that was far more
important in the long run, was the announcement
of the government’s agenda on damming the
Indus. For the last few months, Musharraf and
Aziz have been conducting a public campaign to
build support for damming the Indus, Pakistan’s
largest river.
The Indus has already been dammed once, at Tarbela,
but that was over 40 years ago, and that dam is
no longer sufficient for water management. Pakistan’s
natural water supply comes from summer snowmelt
in Kashmir, and the late summer monsoon. This
fills the rivers but in a seasonal pattern. Without
dams, much of the water runs to the ocean and
cannot be saved for use in the winter crop season.
Dams don’t increase the total amount of
water a river can provide over a whole year, but
they allow that supply to be saved and used later,
and allow wet years to provide for dry ones.
There are two large dams that the government wanted
to build. Kalabagh is south of Islamabad, and
located downstream from Tarbela. It is well positioned
to catch and hold monsoon rainfall. Bhasha Dam
is located much higher up the Indus in Azad Kashmir
near Gilgit, and is too far up the Indus to catch
much of the monsoon rain, but is positioned to
capture the snowmelt of the Himalayas. It is located
well above Tarbela. While there has been little
opposition to Bhasha, Kalabagh Dam has generated
controversy. This is primarily due to the fear
that a large dam there would allow Punjab to control
the distribution of water during the monsoon season,
and it would connive to do so to the detriment
of Sindh particularly. Musharraf however has argued
that without Kalabagh, Sindhi farmers will face
critical water shortages for winter crops within
a decade. Conversely, there is no real use of
the water above Bhasha, and it will have to be
released downstream, so it does not generate the
fear that Kalabagh does.
In the end, Musharraf announced that both dams
have been given the green light, but that Bhasha
will be built first. This was probably the wisest
move. By building Basha, he at least gets Pakistan
back into the business of dam construction, and
if the process is done correctly, will make building
Kalabagh more politically feasible. Hopefully,
both dams will be built in the next ten years.
Another side benefit to the dams will be cheap
power. Total installed generating capacity in
Pakistan is about 20 gigawatts (it is about 800
gigawatts in the US), and if all the dams were
built it would add another 10 gigawatts of very
cheap hydroelectric power to the national grid.
The dams actually are not necessary for “national
survival”. They are primarily needed to
manage irrigation needs for farmers. Even without
the dams there is plenty of water for household
and industrial use. It is farming that needs vast
quantities of water that only the dams will make
available. Even in agriculture though, there is
a vast scope to more efficiently use water. Some
of the rhetoric on this has been overdone by Musharraf
and his team, but in the end, building the dams
is in the national interest, and the correct choice
has been made.
Comments can reach me at Nali@socal.rr.com.
