Delay in work at GBWSP: capital may face acute water shortage in summer

The residents of federal capital will face acute water shortage in the coming summer, as the Capital Development Authority (CDA) has been unable to start work on Ghazi Barotha Water Supply Project (GBWSP) or replace decade old water supply system. At present the civic body is providing only 63 million gallons of water on a daily basis to over one million against the total requirement of 200 million gallons per day.
"The delay in implementation of planned projects with the objective of dealing with the water problem as well as load shedding would further aggravate the water shortage problem in the city", said a senior official of CDA. He said that GBWSP was planned in 2005 by CDA and the authority had hired MM Pakistan as consultant to prepare a feasibility report for the twin cities for the provision of water from Ghazi Barotha till 2030.
"Earlier, the consultant had prepared a feasibility report only for the capital through a 60-km long pipeline from Barotha, but later the higher authorities had asked the CDA to include Rawalpindi in the water supply project," he said. They said that according to the first study CDA had to start the project in 2007 and complete it in three phases. The Authority had planned to start work on the second phase in 2012 to be completed in 2020 and the third phase to start in 2021 to be completed in 2030, he said.
An official source said that earlier the estimated cost of the project was Rs 22 billion but due to delay in work Rs 50 billion would be required to execute the project. He said due to shortage of funds CDA had sent a summary to Economic Affairs Division (EAD) to arrange a donor for GBWSP and water supply system up-gradation project.
He said that the total supply of water would further decrease as the decades old water supply lines in the city are the cause for considerable water wastage daily. The existing water sources for federal capital are rains and ground water, he said, adding that the main source of water is Simly Dam, Khanpur Dam and Tubwells. The official said that due to the low water table, the tube wells that were designed to pull 400 to 500 gallons of water per minute were pulling only 40 to 50 gallons of water per minute. "The tube wells cannot extract enough water as the water table has receded by almost 70 feet," he added.