Diamer-Bhasha dangers

Even though its safety is not assured, construction is going ahead

 The Diamer-Bhasha Dam, with the concrete pouring for the roller-concrete-compacted dam scheduled for this year, even though there is still a worrying lack of data about the seismic risks. A report in this newspaper’s Profit magazine detailed the worrying fact that the Dam is being built in the absence of sufficient Global Navigation Satellite Systems or earthquake focal mechanism data. WAPDA has fixed values by measuring the level of shaking experienced by the site during the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, which occurred hundreds of missiles away, and cannot be seen as providing a standard, The area is subject to multiple seismic events, with the US Geological Survey having recorded 526 seismic events in the area since 2017, registering 4.0 or more on the Richter scale, thus averaging over 50 events a year. The area is firmly in the seismically active area of the Himalayas, where there is major tectonic-plate activity, and which is unrecorded.

Though WAPDA is trying to provide mitigation measures, there is no guarantee that there will not be an earthquake sooner or later. Indeed, unless the Dam has exhausted its life, and its spillways have been opened, an earthquake could make it burst, in which case, estimated Lt Gen Safdar Butt, a former WAPDA Chairman, it would not just wipe out the Tarbela Dam, but also every barrage on the Indus down to Sukkhur. General Butt was one of the Army’s few generals with a doctorate, in his case in hydrology, so his warning should be taken seriously. The Dam is attractive. Not only does it store 6.4 million acre feet of water, adding to an already low 13-14 MAF, but it is expected to add 4500 MW of hydel energy to the existing 10,251 MW.

However, is it safe? There is a difference between courage and foolhardiness. The dam, which is being built on a self-financing basis, cannot be left to the fates, because not only is it valuable in itself, but because its destruction by earthquake would lead to massive destruction downstream, taking the country, in General Butt’s words, “back to the stone age.” Not only is it necessary to compile the necessary data, but work out how the dam design needs to be modified to accommodate that data, replacing the guess work on which it is presently based.