A water expert has warned that water crisis is a serious issue in Pakistan, especially in its urban areas. Addressing the media, Pakistan Council for Research on Water Resources (PCRWR) chairman Dr Muhammad Ashraf said the water crisis has assumed alarming proportions.

The experts said the country needs rainwater harvesting solutions and technology to conserve rainwater like groundwater recharge well type cost-effective nature-based solution to revive aquifer and mitigate the risk of urban flooding through most modern technology available at the local level.

The Institute of Urbanism, International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Pakistan Council for Research on Water Resources (PCRWR) and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (HBS) organised a two-day media fellowship on “Harvesting Rainwater for Urban Flood Management”. It comprised field visits to various rainwater harvesting sites in the federal capital and Lahore.

Dr Ashraf said the groundwater recharge solutions are the need of the entire country, especially in the floods. He said Pakistan is facing environmental degradation as in one season it has dryness and in other there are floods.

“We have to increase water storage at every stage. We have to develop large, medium and small dams as per requirement. The rainwater storage solutions like artificial lakes at housing societies or artificial recharge wells would help manage rainwater,” he added. He said agriculture use water is coming from groundwater resources. “We will have to either reduce groundwater extraction or increase water table recharge,” he added.

Flashfloods, he said, are not mitigatable in the federal capital or other mega urban cities. Watershed management is imperative for flood and drought management whereas catchment areas needs to be enhanced, he said.

The artificial recharge well’s purpose is to intercept rainwater near catchment area and inject it into groundwater well. It would help save water from evaporation, ponding and pollution, Dr Ashraf said.

He informed that the Capital Development Authority (CDA) is establishing 100 recharge wells and 20 monitoring stations from its own resources. 

In his welcome remarks, Country Director Regional Representative for Central Asia IWMI, Dr Mohsin Hafeez said the IPCC Report highlighted heatwave rise, heavy precipitation in South Asia Region due to human induced activities and both the natural phenomenon occurred this year. He said the worst flood combined riverine and hill torrents flood.

He said ill-planned housing societies, construction on riverbeds and encroachments on water flows are causing mega disasters. Climate Change has major impact on water and there are nine months of drought and three months of rain but we have insufficient infrastructure as no dams have been constructed in the past 50 years, he said.

He said the water recharge level in capital was 130-150 millimeters (mm) in 1990 that remained the same in 2021, but the rate pf urbanization spiralled rapidly. He said 4.5mm water tabled improved at Kachnar Park artificial recharge well. We are implementing it on 100 sites in capital in collaboration with the CDA and the PCRWR, he said.

Deputy Director General Sardar Khan Zimri said the recharge wells are proposed in building bye-laws to recharge ground water by adopting the solution at household. He informed that there are 62 recharge wells installed in the federal capital and out of which 8 to 10 fail due to more groundwater level at the sites, whereas 50 of them are operational.

The media persons also visited the sites of recharge wells installed at the PCRWR and Kachnar Park.

The IWMI country director told the media that I-8 Kachnar Park recharge well possesses most modern technology which is implemented after hydrological modelling of Islamabad in which seven potential sites for groundwater recharge are identified.

A PCRWR official briefed the journalists that Kachnar Park recharge well is the only site fully instrumented where water gauge is installed alongwith automatic data drivers that monitor water inflow and temperature shift. He said from May to Sept, 78mm rainfall was recorded in the capital and 1.9 million gallons of rainwater was conserved on this site.

During the second day visit, the media delegation visited various rainwater harvesting sites in Lahore that were the first-of-its-kind facilities to store rainwater causing flooding on the thoroughfares of Lahore that was later used for watering greenbelt plantations across the city.

The first site is at Bagh-e-Jinnah along Lawrence Road where a 1.4 million gallons capacity underground water storage capacity was established at a cost of Rs140 million. The site comprises a catchment area of 30 acre and a ponding area of three acre. The Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) developed it and it helped end stagnation of water in this area during 100mm rainfall.

The water tank had two water pumps of six cusecs to pump water to the other site in case of above 100mm rainfall and storage capacity reaching its full volume.

There are also two more underground water tanks underway at Sheranwala Gate and Alhamra Arts Council whereas the latter is near completion.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk