Historically, the water available during the Kharif period for storage, i.e. surplus water, has been available for only 12 out of 72 years. Furthermore, they argue that during the life of the project, there will be a number of years, especially when there are dry spells, that the reservoir will not operate at optimum capacity, thus bringing into question its economic viability. Our experience with dam projects shows that whenever dams have been built, losses in the system have increased. In actual fact, the losses after its building would be higher than the current level of losses in the system. To justify the project, it is argued that much water is 'wasted' by flowing through the river Indus into the sea.
Nothing is farther away from the truth.
River waters are part of the ecosystem, the flow of which, if disturbed, cause serious damage not only to the river's ecosystem but to coastal ecosystems. This in turn affects the livelihood patterns of riverine and coastal communities. With the construction of Kalabagh this flow will be restricted to 10 MAF causing serious damage to the ecology and consequently resulting in loss of livelihoods for millions of people dependent on mangroves and coastal agriculture, not to mention the erosion that the loss of the mangroves will cause. The human cost of large dams in terms of resettlement has generally been overlooked by the so-called experts while discussing the desirability of large dams. This is mainly because project affectees are from peripheral areas without an effective voice in decision making.