The construction of the third mega dam - Diamer-Bhasha - on mighty Indus River at a cost of $6.5 billion will commence next year, senior Wapda officials told Business Recorder here on Saturday.
They said the draft detailed engineering designs and tender documents of the project, submitted by the consultants, are being reviewed and would be finalised soon for international competitive bidding to start construction in 2009.
There is consensus among the four provinces that instead of controversial Kalabagh Dam, construction of Diamer-Bhasha Dam should be started immediately. The Dam is located on the Indus River about 200kms upstream of Tarbela Dam and just downstream of Chilas Town. Its catchments are beyond the range of monsoons. The average annual flow of Indus at the point is 50 Million Acre Feet (MAF), which is entirely water from the melting snow.
The underground powerhouses of the dam will have an installed capacity of 3,360 MW. The reservoir behind the dam will have gross capacity of 7.3 MAF and a live storage of 5.7 MAF.
Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) Managing Director Munawar Baseer Ahmed and Wapda Member (Water) Muhammad Mushtaq Chaudhry gave a briefing to a delegation of 37th PN Staff Course, Naval War College about the power and water scenario in the country here.
They said Pakistan is heading towards a situation of being water-deficient country, because per capita water availability has already reduced to an alarming figure of 1,070 cubic meters in 2007.
Wapda engineers said the accumulative gross storage capacity of Tarbela, Mangla and Chashma reservoirs that used to be 18.37 million acre feet (MAF) originally, has reduced to 13.22 MAF due to sedimentation, resulting in 28 loss of storage capacity. Hence, construction of at least one mega dam is inevitable to meet the growing need of water in the country.
They said another 20 million acres of virgin land could be brought under irrigated agriculture if additional water is made available by constructing new reservoirs.
They said the filling of water in the raised Mangla Dam would start this year. The first phase of Greater Thal and Kachhi canals are expected to be completed by December 2008, while the first phase of Rainee Canal project is likely to be completed in March 2009. They said that the engineering studies of 15 hydropower projects with accumulative generation capacity of 25,270 MW are being carried out by Wapda.
They said Pepco is striving hard to minimise the gap between consumption and generation of the electricity by adopting various short, medium and long-term measures. Reforms are being introduced to make the power sector of Pakistan more efficient and customer friendly, they added.