The flood havoc in south Punjab and Sindh would have been twice as much if Mangla and Tarbela dams had not stored nearly 14 million acre feet of the flood waters. That is one foot of water standing over fourteen million acres which is a huge amount of water. Kalabagh dam would store another 6 maf of flood waters mostly from the tributaries of the Indus which only it can store. Mindless opposition to Kalabagh dam is costing the country very dearly in terms of loss of agricultural production and power generation. Bhasha dam will be too little too late, at best a replacement for Mangla and Tarbela dams which will have lost considerable capacity for storage and generation by the time it is built.
ENGR KHURSHID ANWER
Lahore
