LAHORE, Aug 15: Water at the Mangla Dam on Thursday touched 1,203 feet level, one foot above its prescribed capacity of 1,202 feet.

The dam remained below its optimum level for the last three years; in 1999, it went up to 1,189.30 feet, in 2000, it touched 1,191.28 feet and 1,181.36 feet in 2001.

The lake now houses 4.71 million acre feet of water against its capacity of 4.64maf. Punjab irrigation authorities plan to take the water level to 1,206 feet, getting an additional 1maf.

The Tarbela lake also was approaching its optimum level of 1,550 feet as inflows of the Indus River were improving. On Thursday, water inflows maintained a flow of 334,100 cusecs for the fourth day. The lake level was 1,523.44 feet with a storage of 5.682maf. The capacity of the lake is 7.2maf.

The river flow in the country also registered improvement with total supplies shooting up to 558,580 cusecs; some 432,380 cusecs were released for irrigation and 126,200 cusecs were stored at the dams.

The Indus River System Authority has decided to fill the lake only by three feet a day keeping in view dam safety. Though, according to a hydrologist at the Water and Powers Development Authority’s water wing: “Even three feet a day could put some extra pressure on the dam. Once the lake touches 1,508 feet level, it should not be filled by more than two feet a day. It is a vital precaution, given the seismically active nature of the area. The extra risk is not worth taking.”

Dilating upon the filling of Mangla Dam after four years, an official of the Punjab irrigation department claimed: “The filling has become possible only because the natural process was not tampered with; it was allowed to store up to 80 per cent of snow melt in May and June. The filling process could have hit snags had there been extra releases during the crucial months, as was done during the last three years. The monsoon rains took almost two months to fill the rest of 20 per cent. Had the dam been left at the mercy of monsoon rains, it could have missed the target this year also.”

An official of the commissioner of the Indus Basin Treaty said extra supply of water showed that the country had come out of the drought condition but now more water would go waste for lack of storage capacity. “Unfortunately, Pakistan has not been able to create more storage capacity for the last three decades. Now it will waste precious water down to sea and three months down the line the provinces would be at each others’ throats for sharing scarcity of water,” he claimed.

He said the president had agreed to look into Akhori-Sanjwal option that could store four to five million acre feet of water, but progress on that front was slow.

The country’s storage capacity is depleting at the rate of one per cent a year and its population is growing at three per cent, claims a water expert here. It has to create four per cent extra storage to maintain the level of water supply, he says.