Water Crisis

Water Crisis in Pakistan
Introduction:
Water is one of the most important natural resource and the major driving force for any economy. God has blessed Pakistan with abandoned water resources. As a result of this natural resource, today we have the world’s largest irrigation system that irrigates over 16 million hectors of land.
Basically we have two major sources of water i.e. surface water & ground water.
SURFACE WATER

In surface water we have three hydrologic units.
(a) Indus Basin River

In 1960 Pakistan signed a water treaty “Indus water treaty” with India.Now the Indus river basin constitutes of the mountain basins Indus plain, Karachi plains and desert areas of Sindh.Its source of water are snowing, glacier melting and rainfalls. From this 141.67maf/anum of water is being received.

(b) Closed basin Kharan desert

It consists of areas of mountain basins of Quetta and basins of tributaries draining in to Kharan desert. Its main sources of water are rainfall and nominal snow. We are getting approximately 4.5 maf of water.

(c) Makran coastal basin
Its main source of water is rainfall. From this basin 0.78 maf of water.

Ground water:
In other words a total of 240.22 maf of water is available to us from the present sources.

Water reservoirs / capacities:

Pakistan is having three major reservoirs, namely mangla dam reservoir, Terbela dam reservoir and Chashma barrage reservoir. The storage capacity of these reservoirs is as shown on the view foil.

(a) Terbela dam reservoir

World’s largest earth and rock filled dam was built at Terbela on river Indus with a gross capacity of 11.62 maf.

(b) Mangla dam reservoir

Mangla reservoir is the second major storage of Pakistan. It was built on river Jhelum with a gross capacity of 5.882 maf

(c) Chashma barrage reservoir

Chashma barrage is situated on river Indus with a gross storage of 0.870 maf
UTILIZATION OF WATER

In Pakistan we utilize the water available to us...