The floods left sand dunes, as Sukkur discovers when water supply cut off

The River Indus has changed its course and sewage water isn’t flowing properly.

SUKKUR: It is when the solutions are the simplest that the problems are the gravest. This is why the people of Sukkur are doubly frustrated after going without water for a week.

The corporation that manages Sukkur’s utilities, the NSUSC, panicked a week ago and cut off the water supply to the city because it was being contaminated by sewage being drained into the river higher upstream.

Sukkur is located on the right bank of the River Indus and sewage from old Sukkur city empties into the river at a point higher upstream from where the water supplies are drawn in. Usually the water flows are so great that the upstream sewage is diluted and doesn’t interfere with the water pumped into the city. But a problem developed after the floods of last year.

With the flooding, sand dunes built up in the area and caused the river to change its natural course and flow around it. This means that the entire system that Sukkur was relying on has been thrown off kilter. As a result of the sand dunes, a large amount of drainage water has accumulated near the Thermal Power Station.

One solution is to actually remove the sand dunes so the system goes back to normal. But the North Sindh Urban Services Corporation (NSUSC) instead wants a roundabout solution. It has asked the Sukkur Barrage irrigation engineers to shut a few gates of the barrage. If the gates are shut, the drainage water will be plugged from flowing down to contaminate the cleaner water. It will flow downstream but on the left side of the river, which would also help steer it clear of the clean water on the right side, where Sukkur is located.

But NSUSC’s demand has maddened the Sukkur Barrage engineers. The irrigation officials said there was no way they could close the gates and jeopardise the flow of irrigation water. An executive engineer, Aftab Khoso, told The Express Tribune that the big sand dunes near the Thermal Power Station did hamper the flow of water, but they could be removed easily with excavators.

Even the deputy commissioner of Sukkur, Sumair Syed, backs this solution and even arranged for the excavators. Until that is done, water tankers can be used as a temporary arrangement, he said, adding that he hoped it would be fixed by Thursday evening.

This was the first time in 50 years that the river had changed its course, Sukkur’s Commissioner Inamullah Dharejo told The Express Tribune. He blamed the NSUSC for the fix they were in as he felt it should have, as a civic agency, foreseen the situation. They have started digging channels in a bid to get the water to flow properly, he added, hoping that it would be a permanent solution.

As these wranglings continued over a water-starved week, by late Wednesday night hundreds of people carrying empty buckets, coolers came out to protest.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th,  2011.