ISLAMABAD: In addition to an insurgency and rampant mis-governance, the restive province of Balo­chis­tan is facing a groundwater shortage of nearly catastrophic proportions.

Thanks to excessive of groundwater utilisation to cater to the province’s incre­asing population, Balochis­tan’s water woes could increase manifold in the coming years if necessary measures aren’t taken to arrest this trend.

A report, submitted before the Senate by the Ministry of Water and Power, also accuses the provincial and federal governments of not responding satisfactorily to the crisis.

Since the groundwater management is a provincial topic, the federal ministry pointed out in the report, the Balochistan government needs to double efforts for the conservation of underground water.

Balochistan lies in an arid zone that sees low rainfall and large evapotranspiration losses. “With the introduction of deep well pumping over the last three to four decades, groundwater resources have been rapidly depleted and levels have declined,” it said.

According to the report, groundwater is being overused in 10 of the 19 sub-basins in the province. “At this stage, groundwater use exceeds recharge by 22 per cent,” the report underlined, singling out Pishin-Loralai as the largest area of groundwater imbalance.

The main intervention required to recharge groundwater resources is the development of recharge reservoirs, also called ‘delayed action dams’, which are being constructed in Balochistan since the 1970s and now number over 300. Their objective is to intercept flood water and retain it to recharge groundwater tables. The typical individual capacity of these dams is around 800 to 1,000 acre feet, but there is a wide variation.

While the first generation of ‘delayed action dams’ in Balochistan was not very successful, the new generation has fared much better because impounded water was recharged through the downstream riverbed by means of water released from the storage reservoir. The report said, “Where they were constructed, downstream water levels typically rose by 1.4 metres.”

“So far, 20 dams have been completed under Phase I of this project and in Phase II 26 dams are at various stages of completion. In Phase III, the federal government has earmarked 10 delayed action dams, for which the Balochistan government is preparing a PC-1.” The federal government has also decided to help the province with the construction of 10 dams.

To relieve some pressure on the groundwater aquifer of Quetta, the Balochistan government is preparing a PC-1 for the Mangi Dam, which will be submitted to the federal government shortly. To ensure its early implementation, the Ministry of Water and Power has made a tentative provision in the current PSDP of Rs 500 million. Furthermore, the federal government has made funding provisions for of Basol and Shadi Kaur dams.

Wapda has also been assigned the task of construction of small and medium dams to conserve water in less developed, remote and far-flung areas of the province. In Phase-I, five such dams are under different stages of planning, award and construction.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2015

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