Mangla Dam

The Mangla Dam is a multipurpose dam located on the Jhelum River in the Mirpur District of Azad Kashmir within the State of Jammu Kashmir, Pakistan. It is the seventh largest dam in the world. The dam got its name from the village of Mangla. Major Nasrullah Khan of the Pakistan Army revealed for the first time in 2003, that the project was designed and supervised by Binnie & Partners of London (the team led by partner Geoffrey Binnie), and it was built by Mangla Dam Contractors, a consortium of 8 U.S. construction firms, sponsored by Guy F. Atkinson Company of South San Francisco.

As part of the Indus Waters Treaty signed in 1960, India gained rights to the waters of the Ravi, Sutlej and Beas rivers, while Pakistan, in addition to waters of the above three rivers within Pakistan and some monetary compensation, received the rights to develop the Jhelum, Chenab and Indus river basins. Until 1967, the entire irrigation system of Pakistan was fully dependent on unregulated flows of the Indus and its major tributaries. The agricultural yield was very low for a number of reasons, the most important being a lack of water during critical growing periods. This problem stemmed from the seasonal variations in the river flow due to monsoons and the absence of storage reservoirs to conserve the vast amounts of surplus water during those periods of high river discharge.

The Mangla Dam was the first of the two dams constructed to reduce this shortcoming and strengthen the irrigation system of the country as part of the Indus Basin Project, the other being Tarbela Dam on River Indus.

The project was designed primarily to increase the amount of water that could be used for irrigation from the flow of the Jhelum and its tributaries. Its secondary function was to generate electrical power from the irrigation releases at the artificial head of the reservoir. The project, though not initially designed as one, also works as a flood control structure by retaining water during the flood-prone season of Monsoon. More details