Provinces reject reduction in water allocation

All four provinces have turned down any reduction in water allocation for 2011-12 Kharif crops despite low water flows in the four rivers during the current monsoon season, Punjab Irrigation consultant and canal regulator M H Siddiqui told Business Recorder here on Friday.
He said that the Indus River System Authority had called a meeting of its advisory committee last week to review the water availability for the Kharif and Rabi crops. He said drop in temperature in the northern areas of the country had led to reduced water inflows in rivers and low water levels in major reservoirs.
This had prompted IRSA to possibly cut Punjab and Sindh's water shares by up to 20 percent to fill Tarbela and Mangla dams for sowing of Rabi crops. However, senior representatives of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtoonkhawa and Balochistan opted for full water withdrawal for maturing the already sown Kharif crops including rice, cotton, sugarcane, fodder and vegetables.
The three dams have a combined storage capacity of 12.5 million acre feet (MAF), but till 29th July the reservoirs could only be filled by 7.2 MAF, Tarbela 3.002 MAF, Mangla 4.157 MAF and Chashma 0.179 MAF. According to the rivers flows and reservoirs level report of Wapda, Irsa has reduced water outflows from the Tarbela dam by 25,000 cusecs in two days, ie from 150,000 cusecs to 125,000 cusecs.
It is retaining 140,000 cusecs water in the dam out of 265,200 cusecs inflow in the mighty Indus. Siddiqui said that Punjab was drawing minimum 15,000 cusecs water from Mangla dam and making maximum use of river Chenab flows (58.500 cusecs) so that Mangla dam could be filled up to its maximum level as water flow in river Jhelum has fallen to 23,000 cusecs.
In Sindh province 126,200 cusecs water is flowing in the Guddu barrage, 81,100 cusecs in the sprawling Sukkur barrage and 33.907 cusecs in the Kotri barrage over river Indus. Sindh Irrigation engineers are discharging 4,977 cusecs water downstream the Kotri barrage into the Indus delta.
FLOOD SITUATION AND WEATHER FORECAST Flood Warning Centre said here on Friday that River Indus at Tarbela and River Ravi at Balloki are in low flood. All the other major Rivers are flowing below low flood level.
MET OFFICE FORECAST FOR SATURDAY Fairly widespread thunderstorm/rain with isolated heavy falls is expected over Kashmir along with Lahore, Sargodha, Gujranwala, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Kohat, DI Khan, Mardan and Bannu Divisions. Scattered thunderstorm/rain is also expected over Northeast Balochistan and South Punjab.
WEATHER DURING PAST 24 HOURS Scattered rain/thundershower with isolated heavy fall occurred in Upper Punjab (Rawalpindi/ Islamabad, Gujranwala, Lahore, Sargodha, and Faisalabad divisions), Upper KP (Peshawar, Kohat, Hazara divisions) NE Balochistan (Quetta and Zhob divisions), GB and Kashmir.