The water situation has become very serious after sharp drop in flows of four live rivers of the country as summer Monsoon rainfall remained 39 percent below normal Punjab Irrigation canal regulator Eng. M.H. Siddiqui told Business Recorder here on Wednesday.
He said the running water in the mighty Indus dropped from 2,18,600 cusecs to 1,45,000 cusecs at Tarbela dam, in river Kabul from 51,200 cusecs to 30,700 cusecs at Nowshera, in river Chenab from 58,200 cusecs to 46,000 cusecs and in river Jhelum from 33,500 cusecs to 23,000 cusecs during the past days.
He said sharp drop of 1,15,000 cusecs water in a couple of days and no prediction of significant rainfall by the Meteorological department in the coming days is a major blow to the critical water economy of the country at a time when maximum irrigation water was required for the water intensive rice and sugarcane crops. He said though Tarbela Dam has been filled to its highest water conservation level ie 1550 feet above mean sea level attaining its maximum live storage capacity of 6.45 million acre feet (MAF), yet filling of Mangla dam seems to be not possible that is still 9 ft. below its maximum level of 1242 ft. However 6.70 MAF water has been stored in the Mangla dam so far.
The Punjab canal regulator said that so far maximum efforts of the water managers were to fill the dams ie Tarbela and Mangla but now it had to shift its priority to provide sufficient water to the standing Kharif crops including rice, cotton, sugarcane, vegetables, fodder, fruit orchards till their maturity and harvesting during next two months. He apprehended that if there were no two or three good spell of rainfall till mid-September the Indus River System Authority had to discharge extra water from the reservoirs to meet water indents of the four provinces to mature its strategic cash crops.
Punjab Irrigation department is revising its plans of running the irrigation canals in accordance with the availability of 114,000 cusecs water from Indus and Mangla zones for watering the crops. Meanwhile the Water & Power Development Authority (WAPDA) has released following data about the availability of water at Barrages and Reservoirs on 20th August:
Barrages: Jinnah-Inflows 212,400 cusecs and Outflows 204,900 cusecs, Chashma -Inflows 213,100 cusecs and Outflows 205,000 cusecs, Taunsa- Inflows 252,500 cusecs and Outflows 224,600 cusecs, Panjnad- Inflows 24,500 cusecs and Outflows 9,100, Guddu- Inflows 178,100 cusecs and Outflows 151,600 cusecs, Sukkur- Inflows 154,900 cusecs and Outflows 100,300 cusecs, Kotri- Inflows 56,922 cusecs and Outflows 17,057 cusecs. Reservoirs' Tarbela dam, live storage 6.45 million acre feet (MAF) Mangla- 6.67 MAF, Chashma live storage 0.208 MAF.