Hamza Amjad in his above titled letter in Pakistan Today on Jan 15 has very correctly pointed to the increasing pollution of drinking water, and also to the loss of 60 percent of fresh water.
Both these problems are the result of dwindling storage capacity in our two dams. The lesser the quantity in the dams, the lesser in the rivers and in the canals. Pollution increases when the same amount, or even more, of effluent from the factories and other sources keeps getting drained into the lesser amount of water in the canals.
Fresh water is going waste because of the reduced storage in our two dams, already very low at 9 percent of annual river flows, against a world average of 40 percent. The situation will keep getting worse as the capacity decreases further until we reach the pre-Mangla no storage level.
This will bring about unregulated flows in the rivers, more in three months, less in the remaining nine months; reducing the per capita per annum availability of water, already very low at 1200 cubic meters (down from 5000);
mpacting adversely on agriculture supplies and community services, on reserve for the Rabi season, also on reserve for any contingency, natural (Hunza lake) or man made (Indian dams), and on hydel power generation.
KHURSHID ANWER
Lahore
