Mangla Dam is situated in Mirpur, Azad Kashmir and is built on River Jhelum. It is 138 meters high and possesses the length of 3,140 meter, which makes its capacity area of 5,880,000 acre/ft. Because of its capacity, it is known as 16th largest dam in the world.
The foundation stone of Mangla Dam was laid in 1961 and it took 6 years to complete this dam. Dam was designed and supervised by Binnie & Partners of London and was constructed with the help of Eight U.S construction companies. The project was funded by an san Fransisco based company named Guy F. Atkisons Company.
History:
This Dam was constructed over Indus water treaty, signed between Pakistan and India in 1960 according to which India got rights on Ravi, Sutlej and Beas Rivers while Pakistan got rights over Jhelum, Chenab and Indus River. Until that, Pakistan’s agriculture system was based on unregulated flows of Indus, which caused severe problems to agriculture, especially in monsoon season when river overflows, all crops went wasted. By Constructing Mangla Dam, Pakistan overcame some of its problems by storing and regulating water and was also capable to produce electricity up to 1150 Megawatts.
In 1971 due to war between Pakistan and India Mangla Dam was damaged by Indian Air Force, which resulted Hydro project running over Mangla Dam, temporarily down.
The Mangla Dam
As mentioned earlier it is the 16th largest dam in the world which consist four embankment dams as reservoirs, two spillways, 5 tunnels for irrigation and one 1000 MW power station. It is located 108 Kilometers away from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad.
At the time of its construction, it had the capacity to reserve 1,130,000 acre-feet but due to sedimentations it is reduced to 4,750,000 acre feet till now. Pakistan’s government has decided to raise the dam by 40 feet to resolve the issue by which its reservoir’s capacity will be 18 percent increased and Pakistan can get 120 MW additional electricity from that but around 40,000 people will be affected by this who live around reservoirs.
This Project was initiated to support the irrigation system in Pakistan by reserving water and to produce electricity from water when it is released from reservoirs for irrigation. Primarily it was not designed to control floods but Government of Pakistan and Government of Azad Jammu and Kashmir brilliantly used it so many times to control flood in monsoon seasons.
Government of Pakistan pays royalty to Government of Azad Jamuu Kashmir as this dam built in AJK as there were over 280 Villages and towns of district Mirpur and Dadyal of AJK that were affected due to construction of this dam and around 110,000 people were displaced.
