Each time a flood hits Pakistan, a demand for Kalabagh Dam is resuscitated. An illusion has been postulated that the Kalabagh dam is a panacea for all problems of Pakistan including floods, droughts, avalanches and glacial lake bursts.

The lobby perennially obsessed with the dam has conjured up an image of the dam as the eternal and only bulwark against every hydro-climatic catastrophe. Simpletons owing their wisdom to the polymath tv anchors insinuate every opponent of the dam as enemy of the country. Not just simpletons, some senior political leaders also frequently issue similar statements. Some patriots do not hesitate to construe the dam opponents as agents of a rival country.

The rhetoric reached all peaks of insanity when self-proclaimed experts of water management claimed that losses caused by recent flood in Chitral could have been avoided had there been a Kalabagh Dam. Similarly, deaths due to drought in Thar in 2015 and floods of lower Sindh caused by the malfunctioning left bank outfall drain project in 2011 were attributed to the same cause. Wizards lacking acquaintance with basic knowledge of national geography didn’t even know that all these areas are off river and even a dozen of Kalabagh Dams would not have proffered any relief to these areas.

Even the riverine flood of Indus cannot always be reined in by the proposed dam. Facts are blatantly distorted without realising that Kalabagh Dam is not designed as a flood control dam. A basic requirement of flood control dam is to keep it empty or allow sufficient allowance of storage during the flood season so that it could absorb incoming deluges. Kalabagh Dam is mainly designed for irrigation and power generation purposes which necessitate it to remain full up to the hilt in peak Kharif days.

Monsoon floods in Pakistan occur concurrently with the peak demand of Kharif season when crops need maximum water. According to the water apportionment accord both Punjab and Sindh need more than 100,000 cusecs every day during these months. In the first week of August, both Tarbela and Mangla Dams were only four and six feet respectively below their maximum conservation level.

In 2010 by the beginning of the last week of July, both dams were holding a massive 8.6 million acre feet water. Tarbela was at a level of 45 feet below its capacity holding 4.3 million acre feet (MAF) while Mangla was only 47 feet below its capacity holding 4.1 MAF of water. Data of both 2010 and 2015 shows that just days before the onslaught of peak floods, dam bodies were full of water. In other words any dam designed for irrigation purpose on Indus could not be left empty, partially or completely during monsoon days to meet the water requirement for Kharif crops.

Massive flows of Indus require a flood control dam that can be emptied by mid-July to absorb flood flows. This defeats the key premise for Kalabagh Dam professed to be the lynchpin of irrigation and power generation system of the country. Likewise peak monsoon months coincide with the peak demand of electricity that requires maintaining a certain reservoir level to generate maximum possible power. Pakistan meets approximately one-third of its electricity needs through hydel power.

Apart from irrigation, this is another reason requiring the dam belly to remain full of water. It is bizarre to expect that the proposed Kalabagh Dam would serve conflicting demands of flood control while synchronously catering to irrigation and electricity needs.

A grim fact is deliberately glossed over to hoodwink the public -- excessive storage during floods actually makes the dam body highly susceptible to abnormal hydraulic pressure. Magnitude of floods in Pakistan is not benign by any reckoning.

Exposing the dam body to a swollen river has its own risks. Impact of super flood of 2010 on a dam body warrants deeper understanding.

In August 2010, Sukkur, Guddu and Kotri barrages braced a flow of over one million cusecs for nearly ten days. Any of the available dams including the proposed Kalabagh Dam would not have the capacity to absorb the mammoth flow. Instead, such a mighty flow would have made the dam structure vulnerable to burst at its seams, hence aggravating the catastrophic flood.

Coinciding with floods in Pakistan, China also faced an onslaught of floods in 2010. At one stage, hundreds of soldiers were deployed to avert a likely break-up of Wenquan reservoir that could have inundated Golmud city with a population of over 200,000 under four meters of deep water. In the same year, the north-east of Brazil, known for droughts, witnessed a deleterious flood killing 50 people and leaving 150,000 homeless. This devastation was mainly caused by the bursting of dams on two rivers. In March 2009, a dam bursting near Jakarta killed scores of people.

Likewise, damming has made drastic alterations in the natural flood plains of the Indus and the contracted trachea of the Indus is also a major cause for the increased intensity of floods.

Undeniably, Pakistan needs an effective flood management system including flood-control reservoirs. However, it requires solutions. Obsession with a contentious dam would not solve the problem. If a dam similar to Kalabagh could address the problem, the best option would be to construct a less controversial Bhasha Dam that is lying in cold storage of Wapda for several years. The dam has been cleared by Council of Common Interests and ECNEC. There are compelling reasons to implement the project forthwith.

The project was inaugurated by the then president Gen Musharraf in 2006. However the water bureaucracy has dumped the project under one or other pretext for a decade now. A lacklustre progress on Bhasha Dam testifies to malafide intentions of water bureaucracy that wants to keep the controversy of Kalabagh Dam alive. Bhasha dam offers no less storage and electricity than Kalabagh Dam, with an advantage of being politically innocuous.

More than 54 maf water drained to the sea in 2010. Had there been a Kalabagh Dam, it would have stored only 6 maf that would not have made any real impact on the ferocity of flood and the ensuing devastation. Only a large dam exclusively built for flood controlling purpose could have absorbed a significant amount of water. An example to this effect is Aswan Dam built on Nile river in 1960-70. The dam body has a capacity to store 107 maf. Before the dam, floods battered the area every year. In the subsequent years, Aswan dam brought considerable relief during floods as well as drought years.

Flood control dams are also referred to as dry dams. As against ordinary dams, dry dams have their discharge system on the riverbed. Dry dams store water only during floods, and are normally not submerged. Quantum of flood flows in Pakistan ideally requires a mega dry dam in the upper reaches of Indus.

The dicey behaviour of climate compounded by rapidly melting glaciers in Himalayas makes Indus an abode of super floods in the coming years. A potential option to sedate super floods is Katzarah Dam that has been kept under a tight lid by Wapda. Unanimously proposed by the inter-provincial and parliamentary commissions and the technical committee on water resources, the dam has the capacity to stash 35 million acre feet of water. Wapda has been rabidly opposing the project which could produce more than 15,000 megawatts of electricity.

In a letter to former prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, Wapda said: "The option of Skardu/Katzarah dam project for further planning has been dropped from Wapda’s Vision 2025."

Wapda attributed over a dozen negative impacts which it said made the multi-purpose dam site unfeasible in the present circumstances. Limited physical access to area, possible submersion of Skardu and Shigar valleys, inundation of over 13,000 hectares of agriculture land, displacement of 223,847 people and loss of the strategic control of the Siachen and Kargil sectors and line of control were mentioned as major reasons for abandoning the project.

An avid protagonist of the dam, former chairman of IRSA Engr. Fateh Ullah Khan Gandapur, vehemently disapproves these excuses. In his opinion the dam would stem erosion and prolong the life span of downstream dams. Most of the objections attributed to Katzarah Dam are equally valid for any other dam including Kalabagh Dam. Wapda never brought this dam into public debate to identify solutions for the perceived problems attributed to the dam.

After wasting several decades in pursuit of Kalabagh Dam, it would be pertinent to explore politically non-incendiary and technically feasible options like Katzarah. Rather than mourning for Kalabagh Dam after every flood, it would be more apt to construct long overdue Bhasha Dam and give a serious consideration to Katzarah dam.