Mohammad Khan Sial in his above titled letter has made the astounding statement that General (Retd) Pevez Musharraf packed the technical committee on water resources with pro-Kalabagh dam members to please Punjab.
The A N G Abbasi minority reports of two members ruled against Kalabagh dam on the basis that there was not enough water in the river system to justify a third mega dam.
The above argument stands nullified with the go ahead on Bhasha dam. If there is enough water for Bhasha dam, dependent entirely on snow melt from the glaciers, then ample water will also be available for Kalabagh dam from the same snow melt in addition to five big rivers joining the Indus at Kalabagh, plus monsoon flows.
Kalabagh dam will be a replacement dam and will store water no longer being stored by Tarbela dam, hence will not require any water additional to what is already in the river system. The majority report of seven members representing all the four provinces therefore approved the project as feasible.
We are fast losing storage capacity in our two dams and unless this is replaced we will revert to the pre-Mangla position of unregulated river flows: more in three months and less in the remaining nine months, both for agriculture and for community services, no storage for the Rabi season, no storage for any contingency, already very low at 30 days, no hydel power generation for nine months and many others.
KHURSHID ANWER
Lahore