Water

Country Water Action: Pakistan
Desalination Project Enables More Fruitful Harvests
(April 2006)

Acres of land were swallowed by brackish ground water in Mardan, Pakistan some decades ago when the water table rose to around 2-3 feet. Today, a government project is finally trying to regain lost land and improve the livelihood of Mardan’s residents.

Contents Mardan, Pakistan Regained Water Versus Land Irrigation Becomes a Problem Schemes to Sustain the Future

Pakistan’s Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA), with support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), launched the Salinity Control and Reclamation Project (SCARP) in the 1970s to try and reclaim lost land in Mardan in northwestern Pakistan. Ali Khan, sub-divisional officer of WAPDA, affirms that the SCARP has already reclaimed 123,000 acres of land including fields in Mardan and Charsadda districts.

The SCARP has built an extended network of perforated PVC pipes about six-feet below the ground in the entire area to drain water out of the fields into a drainage system. The perforation and filtration systems are based on the permeability of the soil. Khan says the system will work for 75 years.

Wahab Gul, a farmer, says, “I now grow sugarcane enough to produce 200 pura gur (about 16,000 kilograms of a sugar-like product), which is almost double of what I used to make.” Gul never grew corn or other dry-season crops which he now does. “I also grow vegetables now," he added. He is now also able to buy things for his wife and children.

Yar Muhammad, another farmer from Shamanroz village in the SCARP region, has also seen his share of the yield grow over time. He cultivates on a 25-acre plot belonging to a landlord and gets to keep a third of the produce. “Now I grow enough to feed my family and send my children to school,” he said.

Top

Until a few years ago, Wahab Gul rarely had any reason to travel to the city to sell produce. Even with 10 acres of land, he had nothing to sell, and life back in the village was a losing battle against water-logging and salinity. "I used to grow rice and sugarcane but the harvest was poor," said Wahab Gul. “No vegetables or corn would grow because there was always water in the field.”

“The water table in the SCARP area came to the ground level during the rainy season and this caused major declines in crop yield,” said Ali Khan. “Because the production was low, the villagers became very poor."

The water logged fields in Mardan and Charsadda districts between River Kabul in the South, River Swat in the West and the Malakand hills in the North used to be well-known for high crop yield. 

An elaborate irrigation system, built in 1885, comprised of the Lower Swat Canal System, a main canal and ten major distribution outlets, including an arrangement to drain excess water. Those were the days when the water table was about 70-80 feet below ground level. 

The water level rose to around 2-3 feet after the 1970s and in many of the low lying areas the fields were submerged under stagnant water. This was also about the time when WAPDA launched the SCARP to try and reclaim the lost land in Mardan.

Top

The success of the project, however, has also caused another problem that could change the fortunes of the villagers. Many of the once water-logged fields now need regular irrigation and not all farmers have been able to irrigate their fields with the water they get to use.

“Some fields have run dry after the pipes were installed,” said Muhammad. “Water allotted to us is not enough to irrigate all the land I use. 

The problem of maintenance of the underground pipes is another emerging issue. “There are some problems in the sub-surface pipes in some places. The underground pipes have been damaged and there is no repair work,” said Wajid Khan of Buner Gul village.

Top

WAPDA officials dismiss the claims saying that that the dryness of the soil is more a result of the extended draught in the region rather than water being drained away. “The water table has gone below nine feet our pipes are only six feet below the surface,” said Khan Muhammad, executive engineer at WAPDA.

Project officials added that the pipes would not develop problems for many years if they are regularly maintained, which however, is the responsibility of another department. Encouraged by the success of the project, new schemes to cover other water-logged areas in Mardan are being planned by WAPDA.