Water conditions in Pakistan

    WATER LEVELS IN PAKISTAN

Total annual groundwater potential in Pakistan is estimated at 68 billion m3 . The annual groundwater pumpage has increased from 4 billion m3 in 1959 to around 60 billion m3 in 1999- 00. About 79 % area in Punjab and 28% area in Sindh have fresh groundwater suitable for agriculture (Afzal 1999; Bhutta 1999). Since most of the easily exploitable surface water resources have already been tapped, the future demand of water for agriculture, people and nature will have to be met largely through water conservation and further exploitation of already over-mined groundwater resources.

 Quality of groundwater varies widely, ranging from less than 1,000 ppm to more than 3000 ppm. Some 5.75 mha are underlain with groundwater having salinity less than 1000 ppm, 1.84 mha with salinity ranging from 1000 to 3000 ppm and 4.28 mha with salinity more than 3000 ppm. Although investments in drainage have been significant in Pakistan during the last two decades, waterlogging still affects large tracts of land (WB 1994). Salinity and sodicity also constrain farmers and affect agricultural production.

 These problems are further exacerbated by the use of poor quality groundwater (Kijne and Kuper 1995). In fresh groundwater areas, excessive pumping by private tubewells leads to mining of the aquifer (NESPAK 1991) and redistribution of the groundwater quality (Zuberi and Sufi 1992; WRRI, MONA and IIMI 1999).

 Recharge to the freshwater zone due to the additional supplies from Tarbela has contributed significantly in maintaining groundwater quality. However, recharge to the brackish groundwater zone created serious quality concerns for the disposal of the saline effluents despite creating a top layer of potable water for the concerned population (Ahmad 1993b). This problem was mainly due to the approach followed for drainage of area under the SCARPs in brackish groundwater zone, where saline groundwater was pumped from deeper depths (Ahmad 1990).

 Mining of groundwater, which is presently occurring in many areas, will cause intrusion of saline groundwater into the fresh groundwater areas. In addition, seepage of water from farmland will add dissolved fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides to groundwater. This will further increase pollution of groundwater and deteriorate its quality. The use of polluted groundwater for drinking may cause serious health hazards and its use for irrigated agriculture may adversely affect production potential of irrigated lands due to aggravation of the problem of salinity, sodicity and specific ions effect on crops and plants

 It is essential to minimise groundwater pollution to improve its quality as far as possible through regulation of groundwater extraction and/or increasing the recharge in areas where mining of groundwater is taking place.

Water over use places in Pakistan

                                                                                                                 According to my own estimate the most wide use of water in Pakistan is at CAR WASH STATION.An estimate shows that the water pump used there is pumping 1 liter water in 5 seconds which is 12 liters in a minute and 720 liters in an hour which is purely mineral water coming from a depth of about 400 feet.The price of 1 liter of mineral water is 70 rupees and of  720 liters is 50,400.Tis is just the loss of 1 hour.

A service station works maximumly 10 hours a day so the water used is 7200 liters with a price of 504,000.This is the result of use of water in just a day at one car wash station.

There are about 4 to 5 service stations in a medium village.So there about a loss of 36,000 liters of water in a day in just a medium town which is a too large figure.At these stations there is not only the use of water but also there is use of fuel like diesel and use of money by the owners of cars.

The water table is decreasing one meter a year and there are chances in increase of this rate by the proceeding year.

In my own life I had seen that in our village the useable and fresh water is at 35 to 45 feet below ground level.Now to get freesh and pure water we have to dig about 200 feet down the ground.This didn't happened naturally this is all due to human activities.