Failure of a mega drainage project
The LBOD project commenced on December 13, 1984 with an WorldBank/IDA credit of $150 million. The approved PC-1 cost of project was estimated at over Rs8.5 billion, which ended up with over Rs31 billion leaving behind a tragic trail of engineering, environmental, human and socio-economic failures.
The Stage-1 of LBOD project was designed to raise agricultural production of about 1.27 million Cultivable Command Area, mainly by reducing water logging and salinity in the three districts- Nawabshah, Sanghar and Mirpurkhas on the left bank of Indus. The major donors were IDA and ADB.
The unfinished work of the project was merged in another mega project National Drainage Project (NDP) of $786 million, which envisaged extending LBOD to cater for the effluent generated in Punjab through a 1464 kms long drain under National Surface Drainage System (NSDS).
The district of Badin was used as conduit for the Spinal Drain of the project for ultimate disposal of saline effluent to the Arabian Sea through a 42 kms long Tidal Link Canal.
Outfall structure in any drainage project is considered as the most sensitive component, requiring well placed environmental and socio-economic safeguards around the area. Perhaps, this was the most neglected segment of the LBOD project. People of the area had expressed their apprehensions ever since they came to know about the Tidal Link passing through Badin. But all their arguments were rejected by the “experts” considering them ignorant and illiterate fishermen. No heed was paid to the concerns raised by the experts and civil society of Sindh.
A major challenge for the project designers was to provide safe disposal of effluent to sea. It was decided to transport the effluent via 92 ft wide and 42 kms long Tidal Link canal through a natural lake complex of very high ecological significance. Two of the four lakes Nureri and Jubbo were recognized as Ramsar sites, confirming the existence of rich eco-system.
Crossing a drainage channel through such delicate eco-system, which also supported livelihood for about 15,000 fishermen from about 40 villages, was enough to warrant diligent environmental and scoio-economic mechanism.
To prevent drainage flow from entering in dhands, an embankment was provided with a 4.5 ft high, 1,800 ft long “Cholri Weir” to avoid draining of dhands’ water during recession of tide thus maintaining minimum water level of dhands.
Although the environmental conservation regulations of that time were not too stringent with donors and the borrower, yet it did not require a genius to gauge the degree of risk involved.
In its draft report, the WB Inspection Panel also observed that “….the selected alignment for the Tidal Link was politically attractive—however technically and environmentally risky”.
Considering the environmental sensitivities, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for LBOD was carried out in 1989, which also confirmed the risks. The document says “fishing and the livelihood of those fishermen dependent on the dhands, would be drastically affected.”
The Panel also indicated a number of technical defects in the project design and execution. The design did not adequately account for occasional high intensity storms in coastal areas and the impact of high tide flows.
A most baffling finding comes from the two separate soil sample results. In November and December 1983 when project was at preparation stage, soil samples analysed along the Tidal link show stiff cohesive clay with 85 per cent silt content.
However at the design stage soil testing carried out by Foundation Engineering Ltd. depict the soil with much smaller silt and clay, frictionless cohesive soil. In spite of knowing that the soil in the channel bed is not sufficiently cohesive, no protection was provided at the bed of Cholri Weir, which was exposed to active erosion during tidal fluctuation.
With questionable strength, this soil was also used in sections of embankment of the Tidal Link, only to multiply its vulnerability against tidal wave action. At the top of that, the Tidal Link was aligned against the wind direction thus adding more pressure to tidal inflow from the sea creek. All that culminated in collapse of Cholri Weir during the night of June 24, 1998, unleashing an unprecedented environmental havoc with the fragile lake system converting them in saline sink beyond recovery. Authorities made cosmetic efforts to repair the weir but within four months the breach became 450 ft wide from southern side and authorities capitulated.
A panel of experts fielded by the Sindh Government to investigate the causes of the failure also confirmed the design defects. It concluded that the insufficient embedded length of the sheet piling of the weir and the missing bed protection in the channel were the most critical factors responsible for the failure. It was established that the designers did not consider damaging erosive action of the tidal current on the less cohesive soil.
Before any solution would have been considered, a disastrous cyclone lashed the area on May 21, 1999. It caused 54 breaches in the embankment of the tidal link rendering it completely irreparable. The breached structure unleashed an unprecedented disaster on nearby settlements of fishermen communities and according to official figures, about 75 people died in Badin alone, whereas local communities put toll on much higher side. With this disaster, embankments were washed away and the Tidal Link flow became part of dhand complex and salinity level started rising, thus playing havoc with environment.
At one stage, salinity of Pateji dhand was measured as horribly high at 68,000 ppm previously measured at 15,000 ppm. The salinity scale can be judged from the fact that the salinity of sea is around 35,000 ppm, hence Pateji dhand became doubly saline.
The WB Inspection Panel document using highly pertinent term calls the dhand “biologically dead. Before LBOD project, the lake system would also receive low salinity water from local drains of Badin, constructed as part of Kotri Surface Drainage System. These drains also started reverse flowing particularly at high tide hours, thus spilling into surrounding agricultural land rendering it unfit for cropping.
Hence the poor communities of Badin not only lost their fisheries and other resources from dhands but also started loosing their agricultural land due to backflow in local drains connected to dhand complex. This has also impacted aquifer in the vicinity thus depriving communities from drinkable fresh water.
This multiple disaster is no where quantifiably accounted to assess the extent of damage inflicted by mega-project on marginalised communities of Badin. The most important task should have been to start a robust monitoring of effects and considering package for rehabilitation and compensation of the affected persons.
The Panel also observed (in fact endorsed the views of local communities and experts of Sindh) “there were no provisions for an emergency closure of the Tidal Link. No facilities were in place to warn the population and mitigate flood impact. There were no fail-safe provisions in the design.”
The most important follow-up should have been a robust monitoring plan to keep a tab on ecological changes surfacing in the area. The 2001 World Bank Mission also recommended the same. This would have helped in gauging the scale of impact and devising appropriate rehabilitation and compensation measures for those affected but no one seems worried about them.
No serious action was ever taken to compensate the affectees. The panel also observes “there have been significant shortcomings in implementing previously proposed recommendations to address problems faced by local communities.”
Responsibility does not merely lie with the federal government or the government of Sindh, the World Bank is equally responsible for this shear negligence. The WB Staff Appraisal Report (SAR) of LBOD-1984, carries very important note on page 45-46. It reads “Drainage flows from KPOD into the tidal link connecting to the Arabian Sea should have no effect on the natural environment, nor should they affect the livelihood of the fishermen in the area.” On Chotiaryoon Reservoir, the SAR reads: “Chotiari reservoir impounding would create negligible damage and resettlement costs since only a few accommodations for fishermen are located in the reservoir inundation area.”
This under-estimation of the risk of impact on communities shows how unrealistic World Bank documents right from the beginning.
The bank placed the project under category B, which requires only environmental analysis as against category A, which requires a full environmental assessment. This indicates how much seriousness was attached with the project by the donor. The bank management admitted this mistake only when the inspection panel raised it in its report. Certainly this omission is mind boggling knowing the details of LBOD and associated environmental risks. This was not even rectified in the course of execution of project when environmental impacts became more foreseeable.
The WB Inspection Panel rightly indicates that “as a result of shortcomings in the Environmental Assessment, decision making on environmentally-crucial elements under the project became less systematic, less informed and more ad hoc.”
Apart from negligence of environmental aspects, policy flaws and faulty design, another major cause of disaster was poor supervision of infrastructure component during execution. WAPDA was directly responsible for the quality of work.
Obviously the government, donors, specially World Bank had their own monitoring mechanism in place but poor supervision provided ample space to the project executants to go almost unchecked with poor design and construction of infrastructure. It would be pertinent to quote two observations made by the Panel.
The Panel observed that decks of bridge over the KPOD were almost paper-thin (less than 8 mm thick) and had been constructed with very low quality concrete. Reinforcement bars had insufficient concrete coverage and were heavily eroding requiring complete reconstruction of the bridges after only ten years.
The Panel experts pointed out that” approach slabs and wings of bridges over the KPOD were not properly designed and could not withstand wave action and currents. The panel also inspected the remaining embankments of the Tidal Link. The experts considered them to be of flimsy construction.
During critical phase of construction of the outfall component, the Panel noted that no experts with relevant expertise (designing outfall structures, knowledge of coastal morphology, environmental and social aspects) were engaged and all design and implementation work was carried out through Irrigation engineers.
The bank’s role was not much better either. Its monitoring missions did not give adequate importance to the failure of Tidal Link. The Aide Memoir from the WB Mission in May-June 1999 made no mention of Tidal Link, despite heavy damages had already occurred to it.
The Aide Memoir of the fifth mission/mid-term review mission in February-April 2000 noted the government of Sindh’s request for funding for the Tidal Link and the bank’s unwillingness to fund the same. It took three years when Bank realised the need of investigating the failure.
Surprisingly, the mission’s report mentioned many technical aspects but made no mention of the effects on local communities. All its recommendations focused only around technical aspects, forgetting completely the rehabilitation of those who paid the cost of this mega failure.
The Inspection Panel noted that, “The Panel is concerned that the Implementation Completion Report that was circulated to the Board was insufficiently transparent on important shortcomings of the Project.
The Panel can not explain why management’s internal checks did not detect the discrepancies between the final report and supervision reports, and why the final ICR was not amended once it was shown to have misleading in its assessment of the project outcomes.”
In fact, the panel has unmasked the grim realities of LBOD, which were being denied since years by responsible agencies.