LAHORE: The commissioning of multi-purpose Diamer Bhasha Dam on River Indus has been postponed by another about 17 years as this mega project, having strategic importance, is now expected to be completed in the year 2037 instead of 2020, literally converting the water crisis into an existential threat to the country.

According to documents available with The News, the Dasu Hydropower Project is being given preference to the Diamer Bhasha Dam, ignoring imminent threat of water shortage and floods.

A Wapda spokesman said Wapda was vigorously working on the project. This change in time frame has been termed as a strategic blunder being committed by the departments concerned which will leave the country in a famine-like situation due to shortage of water. On the other hand, the country will be a target of catastrophic floods.

Having failed to make any headways in arranging finances for the mega Bhasha Dam project, sources said the authorities concerned had decided to put its construction on the backburner.Resultantly, a policy shift has been made to give preference to hydel generation to water storage and flood mitigation with initiating work on the Dasu Hydropower Project. Putting aside the previous plan to first construct the Diamer Bhasha Dam, the prime minister laid the foundation stone at the ground-breaking ceremony of Dasu Hydropower Project a couple of weeks back.

The construction of Dasu Hydropower Project has automatically delayed the construction of Diamer Bhasha Dam upstream on River Indus, sources said, adding the estimate about river flows, sediment volume, power generation and flood size had been made for the Dasu Hydropower Project while taking into consideration the scenario without the Bhasha Dam in the upstream.

The expected commissioning date of the Bhasha Dam has been mentioned on page 7-48 of the Environmental & Social Assessment Report of Dasu Hydropower Project (reviewed draft-March 2014) as the year 2037. It is stated that before completion of Bhasha Dam, the Dasu Hydropower Project in the downstream will cater to the needs of power base load while after commissioning of the dam, it will work as a peaking facility in view of the guaranteed flows of the Bhasha Dam.

Wapda seems to be tightlipped on the important aspect of water sector projects. Its spokesman did not accept or deny the content of the report about deferment of the Bhasha Dam. After three days of deliberations, its spokesman said, “Wapda will not comment on news about delay in the construction of Bhasha Dam.” He insisted that work on the Bhasha Dam was going on vigorously.

The building of Bhasha Dam is being deferred at a time when Pakistan enters into acute level of ‘physical water scarcity’. The per capita water availability per year in Pakistan, which is located in an arid climate zone, is presently estimated at 1007 cubic metre which will further reduce to 999 cubic metre with the advent of 2015. In the year 2037, when the Bhasha Dam is expected to be commissioned, water availability will touch rock bottom of 711 cubic metres per capita, which is below than the shortage of water prevailing in African countries.

The population of Pakistan will be around 262 million against present population of 185 million. Will we be able to feed this population with scarce water resources?

As far as flood mitigation impact is concerned, the Bhasha Dam provides an excellent solution. According to Wapda’s own assessment, had the Diamer Bhasha Dam been constructed before 2010, it could have saved the flood devastation amounting to $10 billion.

Increase in water storage capacity is also vital due to the fact that Tarbela and Mangla Dams are being silted up. It is estimated that by 2025, the Tarbela Dam will be silted about half the original capacity, slashing its water shortage capacity significantly. In this scenario, deferring or slowing down Bhasha will have detrimental consequences on water availability in the coming years. Seasonal water storage is number one benefit of Bhasha which Dasu cannot provide.

One of the major reasons in deferment of Bhasha Dam is lack of funds. Wapda, while ignoring all the facts about the looming water crisis and threat of floods, readily opted to build Dasu project as the World Bank showed willingness in provision of finances for it.

Even if the finances are arranged for the Bhasha Dam, sources claimed that Wapda has not the capacity of simultaneously working on two mega projects. One project has to be delayed for making way for the construction of another, a senior official said.

Last but not the least, the construction of Dasu Hydropower Project ahead of Bhasha Dam will further complicate problems associated with the gigantic logistic issues involving upgradation of Karakoram Highway (KKH). Leave alone requirement of KKH expansion and construction of numerous bridges over a stretch of hundreds of kilometers, the lake of Dasu Hydropower will submerge about 50-km-long stretch of KKH, further delaying the work on Bhasha Dam in the upstream.

Just for a reference, the Attaabad Lake, which was formed further upstream as a result of massive landsliding in the year 2010, submerged about 20 km stretch of KKH. A fraction of this part of the affected highway is yet to be reconstructed and all the passengers and even vehicles are being ferried on boats from there onwards.

Commenting on the developing scenario, an expert said, instead of building the Diamer Bhasha Dam on war footing basis, the decision of going ahead with construction of Dasu Hydropower Project is not a wise approach given the fact that it will not address the two biggest problems i.e. water shortage and flood mitigation.

“By promoting the construction of Dasu over Bhasha, we accept substantial loss of energy every year and water shortage while completely ignoring the flood mitigation benefits,” he observed.

The Bhasha reservoir will have the capacity to perform excellent sediment-retention function for a long period of 35 to 40 years. At Tarbela, sediment delta is getting closer to its power intakes and posing threat to its functioning.

Retention of sediment in the Bhasha reservoir will provide relief to Tarbela and Dasu project as well. The Diamer Bhasha Dam would increase the life of Tarbela Dam by 35 years due to retention of sediment while power generation at all power projects downstream will generate additional power due to sustained flows of water.

Dasu, being a run-of-river hydropower project with a small reservoir capacity to cater for power peaking needs, will face severe problems of silting. If it is constructed before Bhasha, flushing of sediments deposited in its reservoir will be required from early years of its operation. Low level flushing tunnels have been provided for this purpose. However, experts said, a successful flushing can only be done with a large discharge of water at low reservoir level. This implies that during flushing, which will extend for about six weeks in summer every year, the power house will have to be shut down.

Therefore, production of hydel power will be denied when it is most needed. As per official estimate, about 20 to 30 percent reduction in power generation will have to be borne in power generation due to flushing of sediments. For a detailed Wapda version, these points were also emailed to the director public relations at his official address on July 1, 2014, which he acknowledged on the same day and promised to give his organisation’s version.

He later said on the phone that officials concerned were not available so he would get their comments tomorrow. Next day, he called to say that he had got the comments on the points but he would share them after getting advice from the chairman of Wapda, who was, according to him, in Islamabad.

The next day on July 03, 2014, the director public relations again phoned and said that there would be a meeting on the Bhasha Dam next week and it would be better not to publish this story. Finally, he said Wapda will not comment on the story.“But you can mention it in your story that Wapda did not comment on this news,” he concluded.