KBD would have caused more flooding: expert* Former IRSA chief says dam is not a flood-control project
Kalabagh dam is not flood-control Project: ex-Chairman IRSA Gandapur
PESHAWAR: The Kalabagh Dam – had it been built – would have caused flooding rather than averting it, a former chairman of the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) said on Wednesday, while responding to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s recent statement about the dam.
“The dam’s effect on floods would have been contrary to what the prime minister claimed,” said Fatehullah Khan Gandapur, who headed IRSA from 1993 to 1998.
The KP leadership has criticised the PM’s statement, and Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain termed the project “a dead horse”. “Kalabagh dam is not a
flood-control project,” Gandapur said while talking to Daily Times on Wednesday. “It is a run-of-the-river project and its design has to be changed if we want to make it a flood-control project,” he said.
Kalabagh dam would have caused more flooding & it is not a flood-control Project: ex-Chairman IRSA
Gandapur said the dam’s construction would have caused reverse flow in the Kabul River, submerging Nowshera district and water-logging the entire Peshawar valley. “Consultants have called the dam’s design a failure,” he said.
Courtesy: Daily Times, August 12, 2010.