Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah inaugurated the restoration of natural water channels from Dhoro Puran to Shakoor Lake to save 1.27 million acres of land. He said that the federal government constructed the Left Bank Outfall Drain (LBOD) during the 1980s, but the excavation of its Spinals blocked the natural waterways. As a result, the lands of Badin, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar and Nawabshah started submerging during floods and degraded, turning saline, the wetland ecosystem was completely damaged, and livelihood opportunities shrank. Keeping in view these problems, particularly the livelihoods and the damaged wetland ecosystem, the Sindh government has decided to revive the natural route of Dhoro Puran to construct a Spinal Escape regulator at RD 210 and rehabilitate Dhoro Puran up to Shakoor Lake, he added. CM expressed this while speaking at the public gathering after inaugurating the LBOD system, Sindh minister for irrigation Jam Khan Shoro, Secretary Irrigation Zareef Khero, elected representatives of the area and the notables attended the program.

The CM, sharing the background of the LBOD project, informed that from 1984 to 1997, the LBOD Stage-I project was executed by Wapda to relieve waterlogging and salinity in 1.27 million acres of land in Shaheed Benazirabad, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar and Basin Districts. He maintained that the LBOD spinal drain connects the drainage network to the sea through a tidal link. The LBOD spinal drain collects surplus drainage and distributes it through a weir to two branch drains, the Kadhan Pateji Outfall Drain (KPOD) and the Dhoro Puran Outfall Drain (DPOD). He added that the spinal drain system was designed to direct the high salinity drainage into the KPOD and then to the sea.

The KPOD connects to the sea via a 26-mile-long canal, called the Tidal Link. The CM said that 204 drains from three divisions, totalling 1735 miles in length, would discharge into the LBOD. These include 108 drains from Badin, spanning 813 miles, 51 drains from Mirpurkhas, covering 454 miles and 43 drains from Sanghar, extending over 336.6 miles. He recalled that the Wapda handed over the LBOD Spinal to the Sindh irrigation department in 1993, but the system could not perform and caused damage during the heavy rains of the 1994 monsoon. Therefore, the system was returned to WAPDA in 1995. WAPDA handed over the LBOD System again to the Sindh irrigation department in February 2002.

Murad Ali Shah stated that the LBOD project includes a Spinal Drain of 261.12 km, KPOD/DPOD of 99 km, Tidal Link of 43 km, Surface Drains of 1666 km and 1673 Drainage wells. Its benefited area was spread over 1.270 million acres. Talking about the conceptualization and problems, Shah said that on July 4, 2022, heavy rain began and the LBOD’s drainage network efficiently carried storm water to its outfalls. He added that the drains worked effectively due to desilting and de-weeding processes. He said the LBOD system was intended to manage 125 mm of rainfall in 48 hours with a five-day evacuation period. He added that the recent heavy rainfall of 2020 and 2022 caused widespread devastation and exposed the defects, shortcomings and vulnerabilities of the existing drainage system on the left bank of the river Indus.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan