KARACHI: A Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) project aimed at reducing the city’s water shortfall by utilising the ‘highly polluted’ water of Haleji Lake drew criticism from stakeholders at a public hearing on Wednesday.

The public hearing was held at a hotel to discuss the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report of the Rs6bn project titled ‘Additional 65 million gallons a day Water Supply Scheme from Haleji Lake to Pipri, Karachi’.

The project, however, lacks provision for a treatment/filtration system and the strategy to address the challenges posed by seepage from an effluent-carrying channel, the Right Bank Outfall Drain (RBOD), which runs along the highly polluted Haleji Lake, a freshwater body in Thatta district.

The KWSB project, which doesn’t have any provision for a system to treat the waste water it will generate, was described as ‘half-baked’ by an official of the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) present at the public hearing.

The EIA report of the KWSB project was prepared by the Environmental Management Consultants (EMC), Pakistan, Private Limited.

While appreciating the fact that the project will enhance the supply to the water-starved city and help rehabilitate the polluted lake, which comes under the jurisdiction of three different departments of the government (KWSB, wildlife, and irrigation departments), stakeholders at the public hearing questioned KWSB’s wisdom of not making treatment mechanism part of the Rs6bn project. The three government departments, they said, equally share the blame for the lake’s destruction.

Strangely enough, no comprehensive data about the present quality of the Haleji Lake was shared at the programme. The KWSB attracted strong criticism at the hearing often with reference to a recent report of a judicial commission that had highlighted serious gaps in operation of KWSB and Sepa.

Inclusion of a separate treatment system, it was said, was also necessary given the fact that the KWSB presently had no capacity either to properly chlorinate water or treat waste water as was found by the judicial commission.

“Highly contaminated water from the Haleji Lake will pollute supplies coming from other sources,” said a participant in the proceedings.

The EMC representatives appeared to have lacked confidence on their water quality data that they had acquired while preparing the EIA report of the Haleji Lake project, as they preferred not to share its details with the audience.

One major concern about the project pertained to seepage from the RBOD that ran in close proximity to the freshwater lake — a Ramsar site that used to be called a birds’ paradise — and it was said that the drain posed serious threat to the proposed project.

“Studies have shown that the RBOD and the Left Bank Outfall Drain have played havoc with the province and have turned all its wetlands into wastelands. No environmental impact assessments of these drains have ever been done,” said Saquib Ejaz Hussain, an environmental consultant, while calling for an independent monitoring of the proposed KWSB project.

Irrigation dept’s input

According to him, the project shouldn’t be initiated unless the irrigation department, responsible for releasing water into the Haleji Lake and looking after the RBOD, was taken on board and a solution to the drain seepage was found.

Members of the audience also questioned the need of the project and said that instead of taking up a new project, the KWSB should have spent money to plug water leakage and theft. Responding to the concerns expressed at the hearing, KWSB project director Sikandar Ali Zardari claimed that the project would revive the lake’s glory and benefit Karachiites facing water shortage.

Lake cleaning

“Cleaning of the lake has been initiated and the level of total dissolved solids (TDS) has reduced from 1,800 to 800. The lake is being continuously washed and its water quality will improve,” he said.

The project director added that the existing infrastructure for filtering/treatment would be utilised for the water to be received from Haleji Lake.

The KWSB installations would be upgraded and strengthened to supply clean drinking water to the city, he said in reply to a question.

Syed Nadeem Arif of the EMC said that it was just a pipeline laying project and the EIA report only addressed the issues related to it.

Public hearing is a legal requirement under Sepa regulations.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2017