Flood Regulation Risks 

It has been discussed earlier that the possibility of sedimentation and flood regulation cannot be left at the mercy of WAPDA’s mathematical model analysis, because of the assumptions and constraints involved in the solution of complex mathematical equations, making the solutions questionable in real life.

This becomes more important with the limitation of present knowledge on sediment transport. And, in the absence of a concrete evidence on the behavior of sediment load, carried by River Indus and River Kabul, the mathematical solutions of obsolete silt carriage figures cannot be trusted for KBD’s case.  

Since the sedimentation science has an important bearing on the behavior of floods, alongwith the unpredictable nature of hydrology to predict the occurrence of floods, the operational model of KBD to discharge the early floods at the 890-ft level in the early days of monsoon becomes questionable. With WAPDA having no divine power to predict the non-occurrence of any floods in the later days of monsoon, by which time the reservoir will be ulmost full i.e. by the end of August, the whole exercise of mathematical modeling will be left as a futile exercise, resulting into large-scale devastation, particularly in the initial reaches of KBD reservoir.

 Further, the present state of development on the banks of River Kabul (virtually into the Riverbed), and its continued expansion towards the River (in the absence of any building control), restricts the waterway. This will, naturally, enhance the possibility of raising the height of floodwaters to unimaginable levels, resulting into much more disastrous impacts then ever perceived by WAPDA’s engineers, thus increasing the damage to property and life.

 It is also worth mentioning that the downstream regimes have adopted themselves to the high flood waters of the last so many years, as the flood water has carved its way out in the river bed of the flatter reaches of Punjab and Sindh. In contrast, the upstream reaches of River Kabul i.e. areas around Nowshera, Akora Khattak Jehangira, and Attock are new to the phenomenon of floods, because of their lesser eventuality, and they will take years to adopt to the high flows, may be by drowning the aforementioned towns.