Hill Torrent Management in Southern Punjab of Pakistan: Historic Perspective and New Trends

Abstract

Hill torrents (locally known as Rodh Kohi) are distinct type of waterways in which water drains from the mountains and hit the localities and infrastructure in its way with enormous speed. More than 200 hill torrents originate from the west of Suleiman Range and hit Taunsa, Dera Ghazi (D.G.) Khan and Rajanpur Districts of Punjab in Pakistan. Among these, 13 hill torrents are having large catchment areas and flood potential. These Hill Torrents after crossing fan area locally named as "Pachad area" crosses D.G. Khan Canal through 22 numbers cross drainage structures and frequently creates disaster up to River Indus. Hill Torrents generally associated with uncertain flood flows have kept D.G. Khan and Rajanpur Districts Hill Torrent fan area socio economically very weak. Most often catastrophic flood events cause loss of billions of rupees to infrastructure, houses and irrigated lands. Conversely huge area, about 2.02 hectares, cultivable piedmont (Pachad) area fails to receive valuable irrigation water. Since the ancient times, diversion embankments of small size have been utilized by local people for diverting flood flows to their irrigation fields. These earthen embankments usually fail for high flow events but effectively divert low floods. A number of studies and plans were suggested to manage the Hill Torrent Floods since 1929 to date. It has been noted that these projects have shown some improvements in terms of utilization of Hill Torrent water for irrigation to uplift the economy of the area. It has been observed that piedmont area of the hill torrents is very fertile but due to erratic nature of floods land utilization is very low. The flood water due to its erratic nature one side destroys the infrastructure while on the other side barren land in piedmont area (Pachad area) is deprived off water for agriculture. This situation demands that there is a lot of space to improve the management of Hill Torrent floods. In this study existing management practices and appraisal of previous studies for Hill Torrents management in southern Punjab have been discussed with focus on additional prospective for sustainability of initiatives to gain full benefits of Hill Torrent water with an improved protection against flood vulnerabilities.