Water crisis looms large if not enough monsoon rains

Islamabad: Because of not enough snowfall during the last winter in the catchment area of Simly Dam, the main source of drinking water supply to the federal capital, the water level

in the water reservoir has already dropped to 2,248 feet above sea level, the sources in the Water Management Division of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) told ‘The News’.

The optimum level of the Simly water reservoir is 2,315 feet above sea level and the dead level is 2,233 feet above sea level. The sources told ‘The News’ that the withdrawal from Simly dam has already been cut down to half from the normal withdrawal of 32 million gallons per day (MGD).

It was back in 1994 that the federal capital was hit by the worst water crisis in its history when the water level dropped beyond dead level in Simly Dam and the Rawal Lake had become a pond of slush near the spillways.

At that time, the Army teams established special barges and installed heavy water pumps to lift remaining water in Simly reservoir to the water filtration plant.

“A strategic rationing in water supply has already initiated and the areas having small houses with no water storage capacity are being supplied water on daily basis while the sectors where people have underground and overhead water storage are being supplied water on alternate days,” the sources in the Water Management Division of the Capital Development Authority said.

“The normal demand for water supply in the federal capital has been 110 MGD but we used to supply 80 to 90 MGD. Because of reduction in supply from all the major sources including Simly Dam, the Khanpur Dam, tube wells and three small water works in Shahdara, Nurpur and Saidpur we are supplying 60 MGD at present,” he said.

“We hope to receive good rains as the monsoon is about to start and we hope the situation of water supply will improve by mid-July. We are still maintaining a steady supply of water but in case the situation worsens, we are prepared to deal with it, obviously with the cooperation from the residents of Islamabad,” he added.

The Chairman CDA, Amir Ali Ahmed, who also is the Chief Commissioner of Islamabad, when contacted said that the

Authority is well prepared to deal with any crisis and will maintain a steady supply of water to the residents.

“We are working on short term and long term plans to overcome water supply situation with futuristic approach. Keeping in view the expansion of urban area and its growing demand in future, we have taken a number of initiatives including water supply from Ghazi-Brotha canal.

“We have already reclaimed our share from Rawal Dam, which will help improve water supply especially to the ‘I-series’ sectors from storage in Shakarparian,” the Capital Development Authority Chairman said.

“On short-term we have already doubled our fleet of water tankers to attend to public complaints on as urgent basis as would be possible if such a situation arises. On long term basis we are taking various measures to recharge the underground water level for which we are collaborating with the PCSIR.

The underground water level has gone down drastically over the last few years, seriously affecting the output of our tube wells,” the Chairman said.

The other steps to help improve environmental conditions in general and the water situation in particular include creating wetlands, rain water harvesting, pitching of natural nullahs and ravines and a large scale tree plantation campaign in which we have plans to plant 350,000 trees during the upcoming monsoon tree plantation campaign all over Islamabad.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Director-General, Water Management, Sardar Khan Zimri, said the Authority has enough water to maintain water supply at existing level of 60 MGD until the end of July.

“Looking at the forecasts issued by the Pakistan Met Office, we hope there will be enough monsoon rains before this month ends and we are expecting a good inflow of water to the Simly and Rawal dam reservoirs, improving the storage level,” Mr Zimri said.

“However, even in the present situation I would like to appeal to the residents of Islamabad not to waste this precious drinking water supplied by the Capital Development Authority by using it for vehicles and porch washing and lawn watering,” he said.