We probably have to wait a few more years before it finally dawns on the people that we cannot manage with just two dams, the reservoir storage capacity that was sufficient for eight crore people when Tarbela dam was commissioned can never be sufficient for almost 190 million people. 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 commissioned. Also Bhasha dam is outside the monsoon range and will not utilise any part of the 30 maf annual monsoons. It cannot utilise the flows from five big tributaries of the Indus, namely Kabul, Chitral, Swat, Haro and Soan rivers, neither can it control the floods emanating from these rivers. South Punjab and Sindh will keep getting hit by floods every year until Kalabagh dam is built.
ENGR KHURSHID ANWER
Lahore
