Diversion of Muzaffarabad's Neelum river for clean power has raised summer temperatures - and a second river may be diverted too.
MUZAFFARABAD,
Pakistan - On hot summer evenings,
Khawaja Magbool Hadieri's family used to sit on their home's balcony and relish
the cool breeze wafting off the nearby Neelum river.
But
these days, after 80% of the river's flow was diverted for hydropower,
"we're sweating while sitting there, even using an electric fan,"
Hadieri, 70, a resident of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir capital, told the Thomson
Reuters Foundation.
As
Pakistan seeks new sources of green energy, officials are diverting rivers
through tunnels to harness clean hydropower.
But the
diversions are also causing a range of problems, from hotter urban temperatures
to water shortages and sewage buildups in riverbeds once rushing with water.
In
Muzaffarabad, the diversion of the Neelum's waters in 2018, to generate almost
a gigawatt of power, has driven protests from residents. Even environmental
officials acknowledge that since the change the city of more than 190,000 is hotter
during the summer
Now
officials are also planning to divert the second river running through the city
- the Jhelum - for another hydropower project, leading to protests and warnings
about the project's environmental implications for the state capital.
"Water
flowing in the rivers should not go waste and should be tapped for the
wellbeing of people - but river diversions should be avoided," urged Raja
Abbas Khan, the former head of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA).
VANISHING
HEAT SINK
Shafiq
Abbasi the current deputy director of the EPA, said the Neelum river's icy
mountain snowmelt once worked as an effective heat sink for the city, with
residents thronging to its banks during summer high temperatures.
But
since the diversion its capacity to absorb heat has more than halved in the hot
May to August summer months, he said.
Faisal
Jameel, a businessman and member of a campaign to protect Muzaffarabad's two
rivers, said authorities needed to shore up water supplies, solid waste
disposal and sewage treatment in response to the flow reduction in the Neelum.
After
citizen protests, the Pakistan Water and Power Development Authority, which
manages the power project, in 2019 provided funds for the Azad Jammu and
Kashmir government to try to mitigate the problems.
Ejaz
Ahmed Khan, secretary of the state Local Government and Rural Development
Department, said more than three dozen projects to protect water supplies or
improve solid waste disposal were carried out in areas affected by hydropower
tunneling.
But a
much-needed solid waste disposal plant for the area was never developed,
because of a lack of local expertise, he said.
As a
result, the state environmental protection agency has withheld compliance
certification of the efforts, saying they have not been completed, said Adnan
Khurshid, director general of the provincial EPA.
Environmental
advocates say the planned diversion of the Jhelum river, to power a 1.1
gigawatt hydropower plant that is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor
(CPEC) project, is a step too far for Muzaffarabad.
Protesters
camped for two months near the confluence of the two rivers in the capital have
successfully pressured the state prime minister to raise concerns in Islamabad
about the Kohala Hydropower Project.
Pakistan's
prime minister has since directed national water resources officials and others
to visit the project site to look at potential environmental impacts of the
diversion.
State
officials said an in-depth study on potential environmental impacts of the
project has not been carried out.
Meanwhile,
summer average temperatures in and around Muzaffarabad have risen 4-5 degrees
Celsius (7-9 degrees Fahrenheit) since the Neelum diversion, they said.
They
believe a new study is needed to look at how to maintain sufficient river flow
through the city and to consider the long-standing problems of solid waste and
sewage dumping into the Neelum.
SUPPORT
FOR HYDROPOWER
Bashir
Ur Rehman Kant, the dean of health sciences at the University of Azad Jammu and
Kashmir in Muzaffarabad, said there is no doubt the river diversion has led to
a smellier riverbed and hotter summer temperatures.
More
hydropower is needed from the state's rivers, he said - but cracking down on
waste disposal into the diminished rivers could help solve some of the problems
associated with lower flows.
"For
God's sake, please stop dumping into the river and set up a disposal system for
solid waste. It never happens elsewhere in the world that waste is dumped into
the river," Kant said.
Khan,
the former EPA head, agreed that "water flowing in the rivers should not
go waste and should be tapped for the well-being of people".
But he
said hydropower projects should not be designed to include river diversions,
particularly as climate change brings rising temperatures and growing need for
cooling.
He said
diversion of the Muzaffarabad's second river would be "calamitous".
Technical
experts in the state said large-scale hydropower projects are not feasible
without diverting rivers.
"Run-of-the-river
projects cannot produce large-scale electricity," said Muhammad Imtaiz
Khan, former operations director for the government-established Azad Jammu and
Kashmir Power Development Organization.
However,
Khan said setting up a series of smaller hydropower projects along the state's
glacier-fed rivers and tributaries could produce enough power without so many
environmental consequences.
Hadieri,
whose family misses their cool evenings on the balcony, said he agreed.
"We
don't oppose hydropower projects but they should not be built on a cost to the
environment," he said.
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